Job 19

₂“How long will you torment me

and break me in pieces with words?

₃These ten times you have cast reproach upon me;

are you not ashamed to wrong me?

₄And even if it be true that I have erred,

my error remains with myself.

₅If indeed you magnify yourselves against me

and make my disgrace an argument against me,

₆know then that God has put me in the wrong

and closed his net about me.

₇Behold, I cry out, ‘Violence!’ but I am not answered;

I call for help, but there is no justice.

₈He has walled up my way, so that I cannot pass,

and he has set darkness upon my paths.

₉He has stripped from me my glory

and taken the crown from my head.

₁₀He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone,

and my hope has he pulled up like a tree.

₁₁He has kindled his wrath against me

and counts me as his adversary.

₁₂His troops come on together;

they have cast up their siege ramp against me

and encamp around my tent.

₁₃“He has put my brothers far from me,

and those who knew me are wholly estranged from me.

₁₄My relatives have failed me,

my close friends have forgotten me.

₁₅The guests in my house and my maidservants count me as a stranger;

I have become a foreigner in their eyes.

₁₆I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer;

I must plead with him with my mouth for mercy.

₁₇My breath is strange to my wife,

and I am a stench to the children of my own mother.

₁₈Even young children despise me;

when I rise they talk against me.

₁₉All my intimate friends abhor me,

and those whom I loved have turned against me.

₂₀My bones stick to my skin and to my flesh,

and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.

₂₁Have mercy on me, have mercy on me, O you my friends,

for the hand of God has touched me!

₂₂Why do you, like God, pursue me?

Why are you not satisfied with my flesh?

₂₃“Oh that my words were written!

Oh that they were inscribed in a book!

₂₄Oh that with an iron pen and lead

they were engraved in the rock forever!

₂₅For I know that my Redeemer lives,

and at the last he will stand upon the earth.

₂₆And after my skin has been thus destroyed,

yet in my flesh I shall see God,

₂₇whom I shall see for myself,

and my eyes shall behold, and not another.

My heart faints within me!

₂₈If you say, ‘How we will pursue him!’

and, ‘The root of the matter is found in him,’

₂₉be afraid of the sword,

for wrath brings the punishment of the sword,

that you may know there is a judgment.”