1Then Job answered:
2“How long will you torment me and crush me with your words?
3Ten times now you have reproached me; you shamelessly mistreat me.
4Even if I have truly gone astray, my error concerns me alone.
5If indeed you would exalt yourselves above me and use my disgrace against me,
6then understand that it is God who has wronged me and drawn His net around me.
7Though I cry out, ‘Violence!’ I get no response; though I call for help, there is no justice.
8He has blocked my way so I cannot pass; He has veiled my paths with darkness.
9He has stripped me of my honor and removed the crown from my head.
10He tears me down on every side until I am gone; He uproots my hope like a tree.
11His anger burns against me, and He counts me among His enemies.
12His troops advance together; they construct a ramp against me and encamp around my tent.
13He has removed my brothers from me; my acquaintances have abandoned me.
14My kinsmen have failed me, and my friends have forgotten me.
15My guests and maidservants count me as a stranger; I am a foreigner in their sight.
16I call for my servant, but he does not answer, though I implore him with my own mouth.
17My breath is repulsive to my wife, and I am loathsome to my own family.
18Even little boys scorn me; when I appear, they deride me.
19All my best friends despise me, and those I love have turned against me.
20My skin and flesh cling to my bones; I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.
21Have pity on me, my friends, have pity, for the hand of God has struck me.
22Why do you persecute me as God does? Will you never get enough of my flesh?
23I wish that my words were recorded and inscribed in a book,
24by an iron stylus on lead, or chiseled in stone forever.
25But I know that my Redeemer lives, and in the end He will stand upon the earth.
26Even after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God.
27I will see Him for myself; my eyes will behold Him, and not as a stranger. How my heart yearns within me!
28If you say, ‘Let us persecute him, since the root of the matter lies with him,’
29then you should fear the sword yourselves, because wrath brings punishment by the sword, so that you may know there is a judgment.”