19:1 THEN JOB answered: |
19:2 How long will you vex {and} torment me and break me in pieces with words? |
19:3 These ten times you have reproached me; you are not ashamed that you make yourselves strange [harden yourselves against me and deal severely with me]. |
19:4 And if it were true that I have erred, my error would remain with me [I would be conscious of it]. |
19:5 If indeed you magnify yourselves against me and plead against me my reproach {and} humiliation, |
19:6 Know that God has overthrown {and} put me in the wrong and has closed His net about me. |
19:7 Behold, I cry out, Violence! but I am not heard; I cry aloud for help, 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 me of my glory and taken the crown from my head. |
19:10 He has broken me down on every side, and I am gone; my hope has He pulled up like a tree. |
19:11 He has also kindled His wrath against me, and He counts me as one of His adversaries. |
19:12 His troops come together and cast up their way {and} siege works 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 have failed me, and my familiar friends have forgotten me. |
19:15 Those who live temporarily in my house and my maids count me as a stranger; I am an alien in their sight. |
19:16 I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer, though I beseech him with words. |
19:17 I am repulsive to my wife and loathsome to the children of my own mother. |
19:18 Even young children despise me; when I get up, they speak against me. |
19:19 All the men of my council {and} my familiar friends abhor me; those whom I loved are turned against me. |
19:20 My bone clings to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped with the skin {or} gums 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, as if you were God, pursue {and} persecute me? [Acting like wild beasts] why are you not satisfied with my flesh? |
19:23 Oh, that the words I now speak were written! Oh, that they were inscribed in a book [carved on a tablet of stone]! |
19:24 That with an iron pen and [molten] lead they were graven in the rock forever! |
19:25 For I know that my Redeemer {and} Vindicator lives, and at last He [the Last One] will stand upon the earth. |
19:26 And after my skin, even this body, has been destroyed, then from my flesh {or} without it I shall see God, |
19:27 Whom I, even I, shall see for myself {and} on my side! And my eyes shall behold Him, and not as a stranger! My heart pines away {and} is consumed within me. |
19:28 If you say, How we will pursue him! [and continue to persecute me with the claim] that the root [cause] of all these [afflictions] is found in me, |
19:29 Then beware {and} be afraid of the sword [of divine vengeance], for wrathful are the punishments of that sword, that you may know there is a judgment. |