Job - Chapter 16 | English Standard Version

  • 1. Then Job answered and said:
  • 2. "I have heard many such things; miserable comforters are you all.
  • 3. Shall windy words have an end? Or what provokes you that you answer?
  • 4. I 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.
  • 5. I 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?
  • 7. Surely now God has worn me out; he has made desolate all my company.
  • 8. And he has shriveled me up, which is a witness against me, and my leanness has risen up against me; it testifies to my face.
  • 9. He has torn me in his wrath and hated me; he has gnashed his teeth at me; my adversary sharpens his eyes against me.
  • 10. Men have gaped at me with their mouth; they have struck me insolently on the cheek; they mass themselves together against me.
  • 11. God gives me up to the ungodly and casts me into the hands of the wicked.
  • 12. I 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;
  • 13. his archers surround me. He slashes open my kidneys and does not spare; he pours out my gall on the ground.
  • 14. He breaks me with breach upon breach; he runs upon me like a warrior.
  • 15. I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin and have laid my strength in the dust.
  • 16. My face is red with weeping, and on my eyelids is deep darkness,
  • 17. although 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.
  • 19. Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven, and he who testifies for me is on high.
  • 20. My friends scorn me; my eye pours out tears to God,
  • 21. that he would argue the case of a man with God, as a son of man does with his neighbor.
  • 22. For when a few years have come I shall go the way from which I shall not return.
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