Job - Chapter 19 | English Standard Version

  • 1. Then Job answered and said:
  • 2. "How long will you torment me and break me in pieces with words?
  • 3. These ten times you have cast reproach upon me; are you not ashamed to wrong me?
  • 4. And even if it be true that I have erred, my error remains with myself.
  • 5. If indeed you magnify yourselves against me and make my disgrace an argument against me,
  • 6. know then that God has put me in the wrong and closed his net about me.
  • 7. Behold, I cry out, 'Violence!' but I am not answered; I call for help, but there is no justice.
  • 8. He has walled up my way, so that I cannot pass, and he has set darkness upon my paths.
  • 9. He has stripped from me my glory and taken the crown from my head.
  • 10. He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone, and my hope has he pulled up like a tree.
  • 11. He has kindled his wrath against me and counts me as his adversary.
  • 12. His 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.
  • 14. My relatives have failed me, my close friends have forgotten me.
  • 15. The guests in my house and my maidservants count me as a stranger; I have become a foreigner in their eyes.
  • 16. I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer; I must plead with him with my mouth for mercy.
  • 17. My breath is strange to my wife, and I am a stench to the children of my own mother.
  • 18. Even young children despise me; when I rise they talk against me.
  • 19. All my intimate friends abhor me, and those whom I loved have turned against me.
  • 20. My bones stick to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.
  • 21. Have mercy on me, have mercy on me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me!
  • 22. Why 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!
  • 24. Oh that with an iron pen and lead they were engraved in the rock forever!
  • 25. For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth.
  • 26. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God,
  • 27. whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me!
  • 28. If you say, 'How we will pursue him!' and, 'The root of the matter is found in him,'
  • 29. be afraid of the sword, for wrath brings the punishment of the sword, that you may know there is a judgment."
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