1 Then Job answered and said:
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"I have heard e many such things;
f miserable comforters are you all.
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Shall g windy words have an end?
Or what provokes you that you answer?
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I also could speak as you do,
if you were in my place;
I could join words together against you
and h shake my head at you.
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I could strengthen you with my mouth,
and the solace of my lips would assuage your pain.
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"If I speak, my pain is not assuaged,
and if I forbear, how much of it leaves me?
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Surely now God has worn me out;
i he has 1 made desolate all my company.
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And he has shriveled me up,
which is j a witness against me,
and my k leanness has risen up against me;
it testifies to my face.
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He has l torn me in his wrath m and hated me;
he has n gnashed his teeth at me;
my adversary sharpens his eyes against me.
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Men have o gaped at me with their mouth;
they have p struck me insolently on the cheek;
they q mass themselves together against me.
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God gives me up to the ungodly
and casts me into the hands of the wicked.
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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 r target;
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his s archers surround me.
He slashes open my kidneys t and does not spare;
he u pours out my gall on the ground.
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He breaks me with v breach upon breach;
he w runs upon me like a warrior.
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I have sewed x sackcloth upon my skin
and have laid y my strength z in the dust.
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My face is red with weeping,
and on my eyelids is a deep darkness,
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although there is no b violence in my hands,
and my prayer is pure.
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"O earth, c cover not my blood,
and let my d cry find no resting place.
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Even now, behold, my e witness is in heaven,
and he who testifies for me is f on high.
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My friends g scorn me;
my eye pours out tears to God,
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that he would h argue the case of a man with God,
as 2 a son of man does with his neighbor.
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For when a few years have come
I shall go the way i from which I shall not return.