Job 16

¹Then Job answered and said:

²“I have heard many such things;
miserable comforters are you all.

³Shall windy words have an end?
Or what provokes you that you answer?

⁴I 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.

⁵I 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?

⁷Surely now God has worn me out;
he has made desolate all my company.

⁸And he has shriveled me up,
which is a witness against me,
and my leanness has risen up against me;
it testifies to my face.

⁹He has torn me in his wrath and hated me;
he has gnashed his teeth at me;
my adversary sharpens his eyes against me.

¹⁰Men have gaped at me with their mouth;
they have struck me insolently on the cheek;
they mass themselves together against me.

¹¹God gives me up to the ungodly
and casts me into the hands of the wicked.

¹²I 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;

¹³his archers surround me.
He slashes open my kidneys and does not spare;
he pours out my gall on the ground.

¹⁴He breaks me with breach upon breach;
he runs upon me like a warrior.

¹⁵I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin
and have laid my strength in the dust.

¹⁶My face is red with weeping,
and on my eyelids is deep darkness,

¹⁷although 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.

¹⁹Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven,
and he who testifies for me is on high.

²⁰My friends scorn me;
my eye pours out tears to God,

²¹that he would argue the case of a man with God,
as a son of man does with his neighbor.

²²For when a few years have come
I shall go the way from which I shall not return.

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