1 THEN JOB answered:
2 How long will you vex and torment me and break me in pieces with words? 3 These ten times you have reproached me; you are not ashamed that you make yourselves strange [harden yourselves against me and deal severely with me]. 4 And if it were true that I have erred, my error would remain with me [I would be conscious of it]. 5 If indeed you magnify yourselves against me and plead against me my reproach and humiliation, 6 Know that God has overthrown and put me in the wrong and has closed His net about me. 7 Behold, I cry out, Violence! but I am not heard; I cry aloud 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 me of my glory and taken the crown from my head. 10 He has broken me down on every side, and I am gone; my hope has He pulled up like a tree. 11 He has also kindled His wrath against me, and He counts me as one of His adversaries. 12 His troops come together and cast up their way and siege works against me and encamp round about my tent.
13 He has put my brethren far from me, and my acquaintances are wholly estranged from me. 14 My kinsfolk have failed me, and my familiar friends have forgotten me. 15 Those who live temporarily in my house and my maids count me as a stranger; I am an alien in their sight. 16 I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer, though I beseech him with words. 17 I am repulsive to my wife and loathsome to the children of my own mother. 18 Even young children despise me; when I get up, they speak against me. 19 All the men of my council and my familiar friends abhor me; those whom I loved are turned against me. 20 My bone clings to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped with the skin or gums of my teeth. 21 Have pity on me! Have pity on me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me! 22 Why do you, as if you were God, pursue and persecute me? [Acting like wild beasts] why are you not satisfied with my flesh?
23 Oh, that the words I now speak were written! Oh, that they were inscribed in a book [carved on a tablet of stone]! 24 That with an iron pen and [molten] lead they were graven in the rock forever! 25 For I know that my Redeemer and Vindicator lives, and at last He [the Last One] will stand upon the earth. 26 And after my skin, even this body, has been destroyed, then from my flesh or without it I shall see God, 27 Whom I, even I, shall see for myself and on my side! And my eyes shall behold Him, and not as a stranger! My heart pines away and is consumed within me. 28 If you say, How we will pursue him! [and continue to persecute me with the claim] that the root [cause] of all these [afflictions] is found in me, 29 Then beware and be afraid of the sword [of divine vengeance], for wrathful are the punishments of that sword, that you may know there is a judgment.