19:1 Then Job answered: |
19:2 "How long will you torment me, and break me in pieces with words? |
19:3 These ten times you have cast reproach upon me; are you not ashamed to wrong me? |
19:4 And even if it be true that I have erred, my error remains with myself. |
19:5 If indeed you magnify yourselves against me, and make my humiliation an argument against me, |
19:6 know then that God has put me in the wrong, and closed his net about me. |
19:7 Behold, I cry out, 'Violence!' but I am not answered; I call aloud, but there is no justice. |
19:8 He has walled up my way, so that I cannot pass, and he has set darkness upon my paths. |
19:9 He has stripped from me my glory, and taken the crown from my head. |
19:10 He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone, and my hope has he pulled up like a tree. |
19:11 He has kindled his wrath against me, and counts me as his adversary. |
19:12 His troops come on together; they have cast up siegeworks against me, and encamp round about my tent. |
19:13 "He has put my brethren far from me, and my acquaintances are wholly estranged from me. |
19:14 My kinsfolk and my close friends have failed me; |
19:15 the guests in my house have forgotten me; my maidservants count me as a stranger; I have become an alien in their eyes. |
19:16 I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer; I must beseech him with my mouth. |
19:17 I am repulsive to my wife, loathsome to the sons of my own mother. |
19:18 Even young children despise me; when I rise they talk against me. |
19:19 All my intimate friends abhor me, and those whom I loved have turned against me. |
19:20 My bones cleave to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth. |
19:21 Have pity on me, have pity on me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me! |
19:22 Why do you, like God, pursue me? Why are you not satisfied with my flesh? |
19:23 "Oh that my words were written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book! |
19:24 Oh that with an iron pen and lead they were graven in the rock for ever! |
19:25 For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at last he will stand upon the earth; |
19:26 and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then from my flesh I shall see God, |
19:27 whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me! |
19:28 If you say, 'How we will pursue him!' and, 'The root of the matter is found in him'; |
19:29 be afraid of the sword, for wrath brings the punishment of the sword, that you may know there is a |