Job Replies: Miserable Comforters Are You
Then Job answered and said:
2 “I have heard amany such things;
bmiserable comforters are you all.
3 Shall awindy 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 ashake 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;
ahe has made desolate all my company.
8 And he has shriveled me up,
which is aa witness against me,
and my bleanness has risen up against me;
it testifies to my face.
9 He has atorn me in his wrath band hated me;
he has cgnashed his teeth at me;
my adversary sharpens his eyes against me.
10 Men have agaped at me with their mouth;
they have bstruck me insolently on the cheek;
they cmass 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 atarget;
13 his aarchers surround me.
He slashes open my kidneys band does not spare;
he cpours out my gall on the ground.
14 He breaks me with abreach upon breach;
he bruns upon me like a warrior.
15 I have sewed asackcloth upon my skin
and have laid bmy strength cin the dust.
16 My face is red with weeping,
and on my eyelids is adeep darkness,
17 although there is no aviolence in my hands,
and my prayer is pure.
18 “O earth, acover not my blood,
and let my bcry find no resting place.
19 Even now, behold, my awitness is in heaven,
and he who testifies for me is bon high.
20 My friends ascorn me;
my eye pours out tears to God,
21 that he would aargue 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 afrom which I shall not return.