ኢዮብ 19

Job: it is God who has wronged me

¹Then Job answered: ²How long will you torment me \q and crush me with your words? ³Ten times now you have insulted me; \q you wrong me without shame.^{a 4}Even if it is true that I have gone astray, \q my error is my own concern. ⁵If you really want to set yourselves above me \q and use my disgrace as an argument against me, ⁶then know that it is God who has wronged me \q and thrown his net around me. ⁷I cry out, “Violence!” but I get no answer; \q I call for help, but there is no justice. ⁸He has walled up my road so that I cannot get through; \q he has covered my paths with darkness. ⁹He has stripped me of my honor \q and taken the crown from my head. ¹⁰He tears me down on every side, and I am finished; \q he has pulled up my hope like a tree. ¹¹His anger burns against me; \q he counts me among his enemies. ¹²His troops advance together; \q they build up a siege ramp against me \q and camp all around my tent. ¹³He has driven my brothers far from me; \q those who knew me have become strangers to me. ¹⁴My relatives have let me down; \q my close friends have forgotten me. ¹⁵My household guests and my female servants treat me as a stranger; \q I have become a foreigner in their eyes. ¹⁶I call my servant, but he does not answer, \q though I plead with him with my own mouth. ¹⁷My breath is offensive to my wife; \q I am loathsome to my own brothers.^{b 18}Even young children despise me; \q when I get up, they mock me. ¹⁹All my closest friends detest me; \q those I love have turned against me. ²⁰My bones stick to my skin and flesh; \q I have escaped with only the skin of my teeth.^{c 21}Have pity on me, have pity on me, you my friends, \q for the hand of God has struck me. ²²Why do you hound me as God does? \q Will you never have enough of my flesh? ²³Oh, that my words were written down, \q that they were inscribed on a scroll, ²⁴with an iron chisel and with lead, \q carved in the rock forever! ²⁵But I know that my Redeemer lives, \q and that at the last he will stand upon the dust.^{d 26}And after my skin has been destroyed like this, \q yet in my flesh I will see God,^{ef 27}whom I myself will see on my side, \q whom my own eyes will behold, and not as a stranger. \q My heart faints within me!^{g 28}If you say, “How we will hound him!” \q and that the root of the trouble lies in me,^{h 29}be afraid of the sword yourselves, \q for wrath brings the punishment of the sword, \q so that you may know that there is judgment.ⁱ