Job Replies: My Redeemer Lives
Then Job answered and said:
2 “How long will you torment me
and break me in pieces with words?
3 These aten 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 amagnify yourselves against me
and make my disgrace an argument against me,
6 know then that God has aput me in the wrong
and closed his net about me.
7 Behold, I acry out, ‘Violence!’ but I am not answered;
I call for help, but there is no justice.
8 He has awalled up my way, so that I cannot pass,
and he has set darkness upon my paths.
9 He has astripped from me my glory
and taken the bcrown from my head.
10 He breaks me down on every side, and I aam gone,
and my hope has he pulled up like a tree.
11 He has kindled his wrath against me
and acounts me as his adversary.
12 His atroops come on together;
they have bcast up their siege ramp against me
and encamp around my tent.
13 “He has put my abrothers far from me,
and bthose who knew me are wholly estranged from me.
14 My relatives ahave failed me,
my close bfriends have forgotten me.
15 The guests ain 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 awife,
and I am a stench to the children of bmy own mother.
18 Even young achildren despise me;
when I rise they talk against me.
19 All my aintimate friends abhor me,
and those whom I loved have turned against me.
20 My abones 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 atouched me!
22 Why do you, like God, apursue me?
Why are you not satisfied with my flesh?
23 “Oh that my words were written!
Oh that they were ainscribed in a book!
24 Oh that with an iron apen and lead
they were engraved in the rock forever!
25 For I aknow that my bRedeemer lives,
and at the last he will stand upon the cearth.
26 And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
yet in my flesh I shall asee God,
27 whom I shall see for myself,
and my eyes shall behold, and not aanother.
My heart bfaints within me!
28 If you say, ‘How we will apursue 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 aa judgment.”