Job 19

1Then Job answered:

2“How long will you grieve my soul and grind me down with words?

3Ten times already you have humiliated me; you wrong me without shame.

4Even if I really have strayed, my error remains with me.

5If you really want to set yourselves up over me and use my disgrace as an argument against me,

6then be sure of this: God has done me wrong and has surrounded me with his net.

7Look, I shout, ‘Violence!’ but no one answers; I cry for help, yet no justice comes.

8He has blocked my road with a wall so that I cannot get through; he covers my paths with darkness.

9My honor he has torn from me; he has lifted the crown off my head.

10He demolishes me from every side until I am finished; he has pulled up my hope as one pulls up a tree.

11His anger burns hot against me, and he regards me as one of his foes.

12His raiding bands come on together; they raise up their siege road against me and set up camp around my tent.

13He has driven my brothers far from me; my acquaintances have become total strangers to me.

14My relatives have fallen away; my intimate friends have forgotten me.

15Those who live in my house as guests, and my female servants, treat me as an outsider; I am a foreigner in their sight.

16When I call my servant, he gives no reply; I have to beg him for a favor with my own lips.

17My wife finds my breath repulsive; I am offensive to my own brothers.

18Even small children reject me; whenever I rise, they speak against me.

19All the friends of my inner circle loathe me; the very ones I loved have turned on me.

20My bones are stuck fast to my skin and flesh; I have gotten away with only the skin of my teeth.

21Show me pity, show me pity, you who are my friends, for God’s hand has struck me.

22Why do you hunt me down as God does? Can you not get your fill of my flesh?

23If only my words could be written down! If only they could be engraved on a scroll,

24with an iron stylus and lead, carved in the rock forever!

25But I know that my Redeemer lives, and in the end he will stand up on the dust.

26After my skin has been stripped away like this, still from my flesh I will see God,

27whom I myself will see for myself; my own eyes will see him, and not a stranger’s. My inmost being fails within me.

28If you say, ‘How we will hound him!’ and claim that the root of the trouble is found in me,

29then be afraid of the sword for yourselves, for wrath brings on the punishments of the sword, so that you will come to know that there is a judgment.”