Job Replies: Miserable Comforters Are You

¹Then Job answered and said:

²“I have heard many such things;

miserable comforters are you all.

³Shall windy words have an end?

Or what provokes you that you answer?

⁴I also could speak as you do,

if you were in my place;

I could join words together against you

and shake my head at you.

⁵I 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?

⁷Surely now God has worn me out;

he has1 made desolate all my company.

⁸And he has shriveled me up,

which is a witness against me,

and my leanness has risen up against me;

it testifies to my face.

⁹He has torn me in his wrath and hated me;

he has gnashed his teeth at me;

my adversary sharpens his eyes against me.

¹⁰Men have gaped at me with their mouth;

they have struck me insolently on the cheek;

they mass themselves together against me.

¹¹God gives me up to the ungodly

and casts me into the hands of the wicked.

¹²I 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 target;

¹³his archers surround me.

He slashes open my kidneys and does not spare;

he pours out my gall on the ground.

¹⁴He breaks me with breach upon breach;

he runs upon me like a warrior.

¹⁵I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin

and have laid my strength in the dust.

¹⁶My face is red with weeping,

and on my eyelids is deep darkness,

¹⁷although there is no violence in my hands,

and my prayer is pure.

¹⁸“O earth, cover not my blood,

and let my cry find no resting place.

¹⁹Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven,

and he who testifies for me is on high.

²⁰My friends scorn me;

my eye pours out tears to God,

²¹that he would argue the case of a man with God,

as2 a son of man does with his neighbor.

²²For when a few years have come

I shall go the way from which I shall not return.

Job Continues: Where Then Is My Hope?

¹“My spirit is broken; my days are extinct;

the graveyard is ready for me.

²Surely there are mockers about me,

and my eye dwells on their provocation.

³“Lay down a pledge for me with you;

who is there who will put up security for me?

⁴Since you have closed their hearts to understanding,

therefore you will not let them triumph.

⁵He who informs against his friends to get a share of their property—

the eyes of his children will fail.

⁶“He has made me a byword of the peoples,

and I am one before whom men spit.

⁷My eye has grown dim from vexation,

and all my members are like a shadow.

⁸The upright are appalled at this,

and the innocent stirs himself up against the godless.

⁹Yet the righteous holds to his way,

and he who has clean hands grows stronger and stronger.

¹⁰But you, come on again, all of you,

and I shall not find a wise man among you.

¹¹My days are past; my plans are broken off,

the desires of my heart.

¹²They make night into day:

‘The light,’ they say, ‘is near to the darkness.’1

¹³If I hope for Sheol as my house,

if I make my bed in darkness,

¹⁴if I say to the pit, ‘You are my father,’

and to the worm, ‘My mother,’ or ‘My sister,’

¹⁵where then is my hope?

Who will see my hope?

¹⁶Will it go down to the bars of Sheol?

Shall we descend together into the dust?”