Chapter 19

1 Then Job answered:

2 “How long will you torment me,

and break me in pieces with words?

3 These ten times you have cast reproach upon me;

are you not ashamed to wrong me?

4 And even if it be true that I have erred,

my error remains with myself.

5 If indeed you magnify yourselves against me,

and make my humiliation an argument against me,

6 know then that God has put me in the wrong,

and closed his net about me.

7 Behold, I cry out, ‘Violence!’ but I am not answered;

I call aloud, but there is no justice.

8 He has walled up my way, so that I cannot pass,

and he has set darkness upon my paths.

9 He has stripped from me my glory,

and taken the crown from my head.

10 He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone,

and my hope has he pulled up like a tree.

11 He has kindled his wrath against me,

and counts me as his adversary.

12 His troops come on together;

they have cast up siegeworkst against me,

and encamp round about my tent.

13 “He has put my brethren far from me,

and my acquaintances are wholly estranged from me.

14 My kinsfolk and my close friends have failed me;

15 the guests in my house have forgotten me;

my maidservants count me as a stranger;

I have become an alien in their eyes.

16 I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer;

I must beseech him with my mouth.

17 I am repulsive to my wife,

loathsome to the sons of my own mother.

18 Even young children despise me;

when I rise they talk against me.

19 All my intimate friends abhor me,

and those whom I loved have turned against me.

20 My bones cleave to my skin and to my flesh,

and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.

21 Have pity on me, have pity on me, O you my friends,

for the hand of God has touched me!

22 Why do you, like God, pursue me?

Why are you not satisfied with my flesh?

23 “Oh that my words were written!

Oh that they were inscribed in a book!

24 Oh that with an iron pen and lead

they were graven in the rock for ever!

25 For I know that my Redeemeru lives,

and at last he will stand upon the earth;v

26 and after my skin has been thus destroyed,

then fromw my flesh I shall see God,x

27 whom I shall see on my side,y

and my eyes shall behold, and not another.

My heart faints within me!

28 If you say, ‘How we will pursue him!’

and, ‘The root of the matter is found in him’;

29 be afraid of the sword,

for wrath brings the punishment of the sword,

that you may know there is a judgment.”