Job 16 / 42
- 1
(Job Replies: Miserable Comforters Are You)
Then Job answered and said:
- 2
"I have heard many such things;
miserable comforters are you all.
- 3
Shall windy words have an end?
Or what provokes you that you answer?
- 4
I 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.
- 5
I 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?
- 7
Surely now God has worn me out;
he has made desolate all my company.
- 8
And he has shriveled me up,
which is a witness against me,
and my leanness has risen up against me;
it testifies to my face.
- 9
He has torn me in his wrath and hated me;
he has gnashed his teeth at me;
my adversary sharpens his eyes against me.
- 10
Men have gaped at me with their mouth;
they have struck me insolently on the cheek;
they mass themselves together against me.
- 11
God gives me up to the ungodly
and casts me into the hands of the wicked.
- 12
I was at ease, and he broke me apart;
he seized me by the neck and dashed me to pieces;
he set me up as his target;
- 13
his archers surround me.
He slashes open my kidneys and does not spare;
he pours out my gall on the ground.
- 14
He breaks me with breach upon breach;
he runs upon me like a warrior.
- 15
I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin
and have laid my strength in the dust.
- 16
My face is red with weeping,
and on my eyelids is deep darkness,
- 17
although 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.
- 19
Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven,
and he who testifies for me is on high.
- 20
My friends scorn me;
my eye pours out tears to God,
- 21
that he would argue the case of a man with God,
as a son of man does with his neighbor.
- 22
For when a few years have come
I shall go the way from which I shall not return.