Job’s reply
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✭Then Job answered and said,2 📚“How long will you torment my soul and break me in pieces with words?
3 📚These ten times you have insulted me. You are not ashamed to wrong me✭.
4 📚✭Even if I have really erred, the error remains with me alone.
5 📚If indeed you exalt yourselves against me and plead my disgrace against me,
6 📚✭Know, then, that God has wronged me, and closed his net around me.
7 📚“See, I cry out about this wrong, but I am not heard; I cry out loudly, but obtain no justice.
8 📚✭He has fenced up my way so that I cannot pass, and has set darkness in my paths.
9 📚He has stripped me of my honour, and taken the crown from my head.
10 📚He has destroyed me on every side, and I am gone. He has uprooted my hope like a tree.
11 📚His anger burns against me, and he regards me as one of his enemies.
12 📚His troops come together and build up their way against me, and encamp around my tent.
13 📚“He has removed my brothers far from me, and my acquaintances are estranged from me.
14 📚My kinsmen have failed me, and my close friends have forgotten me.
15 📚Those who live in my house and my maidservants count me a stranger. I am a foreigner in their sight.
16 📚I call my servant, but he gives no answer. I have to beg him with my own mouth.
17 📚My breath is offensive to my wife, and I am loathsome to my own brothers✭.
18 📚Yes, even young children despise me. When I get up they speak against me.
19 📚All my bosom friends abhor me, and those I love have turned against me.
20 📚My bones cling to my skin and my flesh, and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.
21 📚✭“Have pity on me, O my friends, have pity on me! For the hand of God has struck me.
22 📚Why do you persecute me like God, and are not satisfied with my flesh?
23 📚✭“Oh, that my words were written down! Oh, that they were recorded in a book!
24 📚Oh, that they were permanently engraved on a stone with an iron pen and lead.
Job’s amazing words
25 📚For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that he will stand at last on the earth.
26 📚And after this skin of mine has been destroyed, in my flesh I will see God.
27 📚I myself will see him, and my eyes will gaze on him, and not another. My inner being longs for this.
28 📚✭“If you say, ‘How should we persecute him?’ seeing the root of the matter is found in me,
29 📚You yourselves should be afraid of the sword. For God’s wrath brings the punishment of the sword, so that you may know there is judgment”.