Job 16:1–17:16

Job Says Friends Are Sorry Comforters

1 Then Job 1answered,

2 “I have heard many such things;

1aSorry comforters are you all.

3 “Is there no limit to awindy words?

Or what plagues you that you answer?

4 “I too could speak like you,

If 1I were in your place.

I could compose words against you

And ashake my head at you.

5 “I could strengthen you with my mouth,

And the solace of my lips could lessen your pain.

Job Says God Shattered Him

6 “If I speak, amy pain is not lessened,

And if I hold back, what has left me?

7 “But now He has aexhausted me;

You have laid bwaste all my company.

8 “You have shriveled me up,

aIt has become a witness;

And my bleanness rises up against me,

It testifies to my face.

9 “His anger has atorn me and 1hunted me down,

He has bgnashed at me with His teeth;

My cadversary 2glares at me.

10 “They have agaped at me with their mouth,

They have 1bslapped me on the cheek with contempt;

They have cmassed themselves against me.

11 “God hands me over to ruffians

And tosses me into the hands of the wicked.

12 “I was at ease, but aHe shattered me,

And He has grasped me by the neck and shaken me to pieces;

He has also set me up as His btarget.

13 “His aarrows surround me.

Without mercy He splits my kidneys open;

He pours out bmy gall on the ground.

14 “He abreaks through me with breach after breach;

He bruns at me like a warrior.

15 “I have sewed asackcloth over my skin

And bthrust my horn in the dust.

16 “My face is flushed from aweeping,

bAnd deep darkness is on my eyelids,

17 Although there is no aviolence in my hands,

And bmy prayer is pure.

18 “O earth, do not cover my blood,

And let there be no resting place for my cry.

19 “Even now, behold, amy witness is in heaven,

And my 1advocate is bon high.

20 “My friends are my scoffers;

aMy eye 1weeps to God.

21 “O that a man might plead with God

As a man with his neighbor!

22 “For when a few years are past,

I shall go the way aof no return.

Chapter 17

Job Says He Has Become a Byword

1 “My spirit is broken, my days are extinguished,

The 1agrave is ready for me.

2 “aSurely mockers are with me,

And my eye 1gazes on their provocation.

3 “Lay down, now, a pledge afor me with Yourself;

Who is there that will 1be my guarantor?

4 “For You have 1akept their heart from understanding,

Therefore You will not exalt them.

5 “He who ainforms against friends for a share of the spoil,

The beyes of his children also will languish.

6 “But He has made me a abyword of the people,

And I am 1one at whom men bspit.

7 “My eye has also grown adim because of grief,

And all my bmembers are as a shadow.

8 “The upright will be appalled at this,

And the ainnocent will stir up himself against the godless.

9 “Nevertheless athe righteous will hold to his way,

And bhe who has clean hands will grow stronger and stronger.

10 “But come again all of 1you now,

For I ado not find a wise man among you.

11 “My adays are past, my plans are torn apart,

Even the wishes of my heart.

12 “They make night into day, saying,

‘The light is near,’ in the presence of darkness.

13 “If I look for aSheol as my home,

I 1make my bed in the darkness;

14 If I call to the apit, ‘You are my father’;

To the bworm, ‘my mother and my sister’;

15 Where now is amy hope?

And who regards my hope?

16 “1Will it go down with me to Sheol?

Shall we together ago down into the dust?”