Job 16–18

Chapter 16

¹Then Job answered:

²“I have heard many such things;

miserable comforters are you all.

³Shall windy words have an end?

Or what provokes you that you answer?

⁴I also could speak as you do,

if you were in my place;

I could join words together against you,

and shake my head at you.

⁵I could strengthen 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 forbear, how much of it leaves me?

⁷Surely now God has worn me out;

he has made desolate all my company.

⁸And he has^p shriveled me up,

which is a witness against me;

and my leanness has risen up against me,

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.

¹⁰Men have gaped at me with their mouth,

they have struck me insolently upon the cheek,

they mass themselves together against me.

¹¹God gives me up to the ungodly,

and casts me into the hands of the wicked.

¹²I was at ease, and he broke me asunder;

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 does not spare;

he pours out my gall on the ground.

¹⁴He breaks me with breach upon breach;

he runs upon 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 on my eyelids is deep darkness;

¹⁷although there is no violence in my hands,

and my prayer is pure.

¹⁸“O earth, cover not my blood,

and let my cry find no resting place.

¹⁹Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven,

and he that vouches for me is on high.

²⁰My friends scorn me;

my eye pours out tears to God,

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

like^q that of a man with his neighbor.

²²For when a few years have come

I shall go the way whence I shall not return.

Chapter 17

¹My spirit is broken, my days are extinct,

the grave is ready for me.

²Surely there are mockers about me,

and my eye dwells on their provocation.

³“Lay down a pledge for me with thyself;

who is there that will give surety for me?

⁴Since thou hast closed their minds to understanding,

therefore thou wilt not let them triumph.

⁵He who informs against his friends to get a share of their property,

the eyes of his children will fail.

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

and I am one before whom men spit.

⁷My eye has grown dim from grief,

and all my members are like a shadow.

⁸Upright men are appalled at this,

and the innocent stirs himself up against the godless.

⁹Yet the righteous holds to his way,

and he that has clean hands grows stronger and stronger.

¹⁰But you, come on again, all of you,

and I shall not find a wise man 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.’^r

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?”

Chapter 18

¹Then Bildad the Shuhite answered:

²“How long will you hunt for words?

Consider, and then we will speak.

³Why are we counted as cattle?

Why are we stupid in your sight?

⁴You who tear yourself in your anger,

shall the earth be forsaken for you,

or the rock be removed out of its place?

⁵“Yea, the light of the wicked is put out,

and the flame of his fire does not shine.

⁶The light is dark in his tent,

and his lamp above him is put out.

⁷His strong steps are shortened

and his own schemes throw him down.

⁸For he is cast into a net by his own feet,

and he walks on a pitfall.

⁹A trap seizes him by the heel,

a snare lays hold of him.

¹⁰A rope is hid for him in the ground,

a trap for him in the path.

¹¹Terrors frighten him on every side,

and chase him at his heels.

¹²His strength is hunger-bitten,

and calamity is ready for his stumbling.

¹³By disease his skin is consumed,^s

the first-born of death consumes his limbs.

¹⁴He is torn from the tent in which he trusted,

and is brought to the king of terrors.

¹⁵In his tent dwells that which is none of his;

brimstone is scattered upon his habitation.

¹⁶His roots dry up beneath,

and his branches wither above.

¹⁷His memory perishes from the earth,

and he has no name in the street.

¹⁸He is thrust from light into darkness,

and driven out of the world.

¹⁹He has no offspring or descendant among his people,

and no survivor where he used to live.

²⁰They of the west are appalled at his day,

and horror seizes them of the east.

²¹Surely such are the dwellings of the ungodly,

such is the place of him who knows not God.”