Job 16–17

Job Reaffirms His Innocence

¹⁶Then Job answered:

²“I have heard many such things;

miserable comforters are you all.

³Have windy words no limit?

Or what provokes you that you keep on talking?^*

⁴I also could talk as you do,

if you were in my place;

I could join words together against you

and shake my head at you.^*

⁵I could encourage you with my mouth,

and the solace of my lips would assuage your pain.

⁶“If I speak, my pain is not assuaged,

and if I refrain, how much of it leaves me?

⁷Surely now God has worn me out;

he has^u made desolate all my company.^*

⁸And he has^v shriveled me up,

which is a witness against me;

my leanness has risen up against me,

and it testifies to my face.^*

⁹He has torn me in his wrath and hated me;

he has gnashed his teeth at me;

my adversary sharpens his eyes against me.^*

¹⁰They have gaped at me with their mouths;

they have struck me insolently on the cheek;

they mass themselves together against me.^*

¹¹God gives me up to the evil

and casts me into the hands of the wicked.^*

¹²I was at ease, and he broke me in two;

he seized me by the neck and dashed me to pieces;

he set me up as his target;^*

¹³his archers surround me.

He slashes open my kidneys and shows no mercy;

he pours out my gall on the ground.^*

¹⁴He bursts upon me again and again;

he rushes at me like a warrior.^*

¹⁵I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin

and have laid my strength in the dust.^*

¹⁶My face is red with weeping,

and deep darkness is on my eyelids,

¹⁷though there is no violence in my hands,

and my prayer is pure.^*

¹⁸“O earth, do not cover my blood;

let my outcry find no resting place.^*

¹⁹Even now my witness is in heaven,

and my advocate is on high.^*

²⁰My friends scorn me;

my eye pours out tears to God,

²¹that he would maintain the right of a mortal with God,

as^w one does for a neighbor.^*

²²For when a few years have come,

I shall go the way from which I shall not return.^*

Job Prays for Relief

¹⁷“My spirit is broken; my days are extinct;

the grave is ready for me.^*

²Surely there are mockers around me,

and my eye dwells on their provocation.^*

³“Lay down a pledge for me with yourself;

who is there who will give surety for me?^*

⁴Since you have closed their minds to understanding,

therefore you will not let them triumph.^*

⁵Those who denounce friends for reward—

the eyes of their children will fail.^*

⁶“He has made me a byword of the peoples,

and I am one before whom people spit.^*

⁷My eye has grown dim from grief,

and all my members are like a shadow.^*

⁸The upright are appalled at this,

and the innocent stir themselves up against the godless.

⁹Yet the righteous hold to their way,

and they who have clean hands grow stronger and stronger.^*

¹⁰But you, come back now, all of you,

and I shall not find a sensible person among you.

¹¹My days are past; my plans are broken off,

the desires of my heart.^*

¹²They make night into day;

‘The light,’ they say, ‘is near to the darkness.’^x

¹³If I look for Sheol as my house,

if I spread my couch in darkness,^*

¹⁴if I say to the Pit, ‘You are my father,’

and to the worm, ‘My mother’ or ‘My sister,’^*

¹⁵where then is my hope?

Who will see my hope?^*

¹⁶Will it go down to the bars of Sheol?

Shall we descend together into the dust?”^*