1. Then Job answered:
2. “How long will you torment my souland break me in pieces with words?
3. These ten times you have reproached me;you are not ashamed that you have wronged me.
4. And if indeed I have erred,my error remains with me.
5. If indeed you exalt yourselves against meand plead against me with my disgrace,
6. know now that God has bent meand has surrounded me with His net.
7. “Look, I cry out concerning wrong, but I am not heard;I cry aloud, but there is no justice.
8. He has fenced up my way that I cannot pass,and He has set darkness in my paths.
9. He has stripped me of my gloryand taken the crown from my head.
10. He has destroyed me on every side, and I am gone;my hope He has uprooted like a tree.
11. He has also kindled His wrath against me,and He counts me as one of His enemies.
12. His troops come togetherand build up their road against me;they set up camp all around my tent.
13. “He has removed my brothers far fromme,and my acquaintances are completely estranged from me.
14. My relatives have failed,and my close friends have forgottenme.
15. Those who dwell in my house, and my maidservants,count me for a stranger;I am a foreigner in their sight.
16. I called my servant, but he gave me no answer;I begged him with my mouth.
17. My breath is offensive to my wife;I am loathsome to the children of my own body.
18. Yes, young children despise me;I arose, and they spoke against me.
19. All my close friends abhorred me,and they whom I love are turned against me.
20. My bones cling to my skin and to my flesh,and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.
21. “Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O you my friends,for the hand of God has struck me!
22. Why do you persecute me as God does,and are not satisfied with my flesh?
23. “Oh, that my words were written!Oh, that they were inscribed in a book!
24. That they were engraved with an iron penand lead in the rock forever!
25. For I know that my Redeemer lives,and He will stand at last on the earth;
26. and after my skin is destroyed,yet in my flesh I will see God,
27. whom I will see for myself,and my eyes will behold, and not another.How my heart yearns within me.
28. “If you should say, ‘How shall we persecute him?’since the root of the matter is found in me,
29. be afraid of the sword for yourselves;for wrath brings the punishments of the sword,that you may know there is a judgment.”