Job Speaks

1Then Job answered and said,

2I have heard many such things: miserable comforters are you all.

3Shall vain words have an end? or what emboldens you that you answer?

4I also could speak as you do: if your soul were in my soul's place, I could heap up words against you, and shake my head at you.

5But I would strengthen you with my mouth, and the moving of my lips would relieve your grief.

6Though I speak, my grief is not relieved: and though I forbear, how am I eased?

7But now he has made me weary: you have made desolate all my company.

8And you have filled me with wrinkles, which is a witness against me: and my leanness rising up in me bears witness to my face.

9He tears me in his wrath, who hates me: he gnashes upon me with his teeth; my enemy sharpens his eyes upon me.

10They have gaped upon me with their mouth; they have smitten me upon the cheek reproachfully; they have gathered themselves together against me.

11God has delivered me to the ungodly, and turned me over into the hands of the wicked.

12I was at ease, but he has broken me asunder: he has also taken me by my neck, and shaken me to pieces, and set me up for his mark.

13His archers surround me, he slashes my kidneys asunder, and does not spare; he pours out my gall upon the ground.

14He breaks me with breach upon breach, he runs upon me like a warrior.

15I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin, and laid my strength in the dust.

16My face is foul from weeping, and on my eyelids is the shadow of death;

17Not for any violence in my hands: also my prayer is pure.

18O earth, cover not my blood, and let my cry have no place.

19Also now, behold, my witness is in heaven, and my record is on high.

20My friends scorn me: but my eye pours out tears unto God.

21O that one might plead for a man with God, as a man pleads for his neighbor!

22When a few years have come, then I shall go the way where I shall not return.