2“How long will you torment me
and break me in pieces with words?
3These ten times you have cast reproach upon me;
are you not ashamed to wrong me?
4And even if it be true that I have erred,
my error remains with myself.
5If indeed you magnify yourselves against me
and make my disgrace an argument against me,
6know then that God has put me in the wrong
and closed his net about me.
7Behold, I cry out, ‘Violence!’ but I am not answered;
I call for help, but there is no justice.
8He has walled up my way, so that I cannot pass,
and he has set darkness upon my paths.
9He has stripped from me my glory
and taken the crown from my head.
10He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone,
and my hope has he pulled up like a tree.
11He has kindled his wrath against me
and counts me as his adversary.
12His troops come on together;
they have cast up their siege ramp^a against me
and encamp around my tent.

13“He has put my brothers far from me,
and those who knew me are wholly estranged from me.
14My relatives have failed me,
my close friends have forgotten me.
15The guests in my house and my maidservants count me as a stranger;
I have become a foreigner in their eyes.
16I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer;
I must plead with him with my mouth for mercy.
17My breath is strange to my wife,
and I am a stench to the children of my own mother.
18Even young children despise me;
when I rise they talk against me.
19All my intimate friends abhor me,
and those whom I loved have turned against me.
20My bones stick to my skin and to my flesh,
and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.
21Have mercy on me, have mercy on me, O you my friends,
for the hand of God has touched me!
22Why do you, like God, pursue me?
Why are you not satisfied with my flesh?

23“Oh that my words were written!
Oh that they were inscribed in a book!
24Oh that with an iron pen and lead
they were engraved in the rock forever!
25For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and at the last he will stand upon the earth.^b
26And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
yet in^c my flesh I shall see God,
27whom I shall see for myself,
and my eyes shall behold, and not another.
My heart faints within me!
28If you say, ‘How we will pursue him!’
and, ‘The root of the matter is found in him,’^d
29be afraid of the sword,
for wrath brings the punishment of the sword,
that you may know there is a judgment.”