Job 16

Job Replies: Miserable Comforters Are You

1 Then Job answered and said:

2  “I have heard a many such things;
b miserable comforters are you all.
 3 Shall c windy words have an end?
Or what provokes you that you answer?
 4 I also could speak as you do,
if you were in my place;
I could join words together against you
and d shake my head at you.
 5 I could strengthen you with my mouth,
and the solace of my lips would assuage your pain.
 6  “If I speak, my pain is not assuaged,
and if I forbear, how much of it leaves me?
 7 Surely now God has worn me out;
e he has ▼
▼ Hebrew you have; also verse 8
 made desolate all my company.
 8 And he has shriveled me up,
which is g a witness against me,
and my h leanness has risen up against me;
it testifies to my face.
 9 He has i torn me in his wrath j and hated me;
he has k gnashed his teeth at me;
my adversary sharpens his eyes against me.
 10 Men have l gaped at me with their mouth;
they have m struck me insolently on the cheek;
they n mass themselves together against me.
 11 God gives me up to the ungodly
and casts me into the hands of the wicked.
 12 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 o target;
 13 his p archers surround me.
He slashes open my kidneys q and does not spare;
he r pours out my gall on the ground.
 14 He breaks me with s breach upon breach;
he t runs upon me like a warrior.
 15 I have sewed u sackcloth upon my skin
and have laid v my strength w in the dust.
 16 My face is red with weeping,
and on my eyelids is x deep darkness,
 17 although there is no y violence in my hands,
and my prayer is pure.
 18  “O earth, z cover not my blood,
and let my aa cry find no resting place.
 19 Even now, behold, my ab witness is in heaven,
and he who testifies for me is ac on high.
 20 My friends ad scorn me;
my eye pours out tears to God,
 21 that he would ae argue the case of a man with God,
as ▼
▼ Hebrew and
 a son of man does with his neighbor.
 22 For when a few years have come
I shall go the way ag from which I shall not return.
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