Job’s reply
16
✭Then Job answered and said, 2 📚“I have heard many such things. Miserable comforters are you all.
3 📚Let windy words come to an end. What compels you to answer?
4 📚I also could speak like you. If you were in my place, I could heap up words against you, and shake my head at you.
5 📚But I would strengthen you with the words of my mouth, and comfort from my lips would bring relief to you.
6 📚“If I speak my grief is not relieved. And if I refrain, how is it eased?
7 📚But now he has worn me out. You have made all my family desolate.
8 📚You have shriveled me up, which is a witness against me. And my emaciation rises up and testifies against me to my face.
9 📚He who hates me tears me in his wrath. He gnashes on me with his teeth. My enemy fastens his sharp gaze on me.
10 📚✭They gape at me with their mouth. They insultingly strike me on the cheek. They gather together against me.
11 📚✭God has delivered me up to the ungodly, and handed me over to the wicked.
12 📚I was at ease, but he shattered me. He seized me by my neck and shook me to pieces. He has set me up as his target.
13 📚His archers surround me. He does not spare, but pierces my kidneys and pours out my gall on the ground.
14 📚He shatters me with break after break, running at me like a warrior.
15 📚✭“I have sewed sackcloth over my skin, and laid my horn in the dust.
16 📚My face is red with weeping and the shadow of death is on my eyelids,
17 📚✭Although my hands are free of violence, and my prayer is pure.
18 📚✭“O earth, do not cover my blood, so that my cry has no place!
Job expresses a wonderful thought
19 📚✭Even now, see, my witness is in heaven, and my record is on high.
20 📚My friends scorn me, but my eye pours out tears to God.
21 📚✭Oh, that someone might plead for a man with God, as a man pleads for his neighbour!
22 📚For after a few years have come, I will go on the path of no return.