Job Replies: Miserable Comforters Are You

¹Then Job answered and said:

²“I have heard emany such things;

fmiserable comforters are you all.

³Shall gwindy words have an end?

Or what provokes you that you answer?

⁴I also could speak as you do,

if you were in my place;

I could join words together against you

and hshake my head at you.

⁵I 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?

⁷Surely now God has worn me out;

ihe has1 made desolate all my company.

⁸And he has shriveled me up,

which is ja witness against me,

and my kleanness has risen up against me;

it testifies to my face.

⁹He has ltorn me in his wrath mand hated me;

he has ngnashed his teeth at me;

my adversary sharpens his eyes against me.

¹⁰Men have ogaped at me with their mouth;

they have pstruck me insolently on the cheek;

they qmass themselves together against me.

¹¹God gives me up to the ungodly

and casts me into the hands of the wicked.

¹²I 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 rtarget;

¹³his sarchers surround me.

He slashes open my kidneys tand does not spare;

he upours out my gall on the ground.

¹⁴He breaks me with vbreach upon breach;

he wruns upon me like a warrior.

¹⁵I have sewed xsackcloth upon my skin

and have laid ymy strength zin the dust.

¹⁶My face is red with weeping,

and on my eyelids is adeep darkness,

¹⁷although there is no bviolence in my hands,

and my prayer is pure.

¹⁸“O earth, ccover not my blood,

and let my dcry find no resting place.

¹⁹Even now, behold, my ewitness is in heaven,

and he who testifies for me is fon high.

²⁰My friends gscorn me;

my eye pours out tears to God,

²¹that he would hargue the case of a man with God,

as2 a son of man does with his neighbor.

²²For when a few years have come

I shall go the way ifrom which I shall not return.

Job Continues: Where Then Is My Hope?

¹“My spirit is broken; my days are jextinct;

kthe graveyard is ready for me.

²Surely there are mockers about me,

and my eye dwells on their lprovocation.

³“Lay down a pledge for me with you;

who is there who will put up msecurity for me?

⁴Since you have closed their hearts to understanding,

therefore you will not let them triumph.

⁵He who informs against his friends to get a share of their property—

the neyes of his children will fail.

⁶“He has made me oa byword of the peoples,

and I am one before whom men spit.

⁷My peye has grown dim from vexation,

and all my members are like qa shadow.

⁸The upright are rappalled at this,

and the innocent stirs himself up against the godless.

⁹Yet the righteous holds to his way,

and he who has sclean hands grows stronger and stronger.

¹⁰But you, tcome on again, all of you,

and I shall not find a wise man among you.

¹¹My udays are past; my plans are broken off,

the desires of my heart.

¹²They vmake night into day:

‘The light,’ they say, ‘is near to the darkness.’1

¹³If I hope for wSheol as xmy house,

if I make my bed in darkness,

¹⁴if I say to the pit, ‘You are my father,’

and to the worm, ‘My mother,’ or ‘My sister,’

¹⁵where then is my hope?

Who will see my hope?

¹⁶Will it go down to the bars of wSheol?

Shall we ydescend together zinto the dust?”2