1.
Now Job answered and said,
2.
"How long will you grieve my soul and crush me with words?
3.
Already ten times you humiliate me; you are not ashamed to alienate yourselves from me.
4.
And even if I have indeed erred, let my error stay with me.
5.
If indeed, you are added to my [troubles], and prove against me my reproach.
6.
Know then that God has perverted my cause, and He has encompassed me with His net.
7.
Behold, I cry out [concerning] violence but I am not answered; I cry aloud but there is no justice.
8.
He has fenced in my way so that I cannot pass, and He places darkness on my paths.
9.
He has stripped me of my honor, and removed the crown from my head.
10.
He has broken me down all around and I have gone away; He has uprooted my hope like a tree.
11.
He has kindled His wrath against me, and He has regarded me as [one of] His enemies.
12.
Together His troops advance; they build their road against me, and camp around my tent.
13.
He has distanced my brothers from me, and my friends became strange to me.
14.
My relatives are gone, and my familiar friends have forgotten me.
15.
Those who live in my house and my maidservants consider me a stranger; in their sight I am a foreigner.
16.
I call my servant and he does not respond; with my mouth I appeal to him.
17.
My breath is strange to my wife, and I appeal to the children of my body.
18.
Even children despised me; I get up and they talk about me.
19.
All my intimate friends abhor me; and those whom I loved turned against me.
20.
My bones cleaved to my skin and to my flesh, and I escaped by the skin of my teeth.
21.
Have pity on me, have pity on me, you, my friends, for God's hand has touched me.
22.
Why do you persecute me like God, and why are you not sated with my flesh?
23.
Would then that my words be written; would that they were inscribed in a book!
24.
With an iron pen and lead, forever on the rock they should be hewn.
25.
But I know that my Redeemer lives, and the last on earth, He will endure.
26.
And after my skin, they have cut into this, and from my flesh I see judgment.
27.
That I see for myself, and my eyes have seen and not a stranger; my kidneys are consumed within me.
28.
Shall you say, 'Why should we persecute him?' And what is the root of the matter found in me?
29.
Fear the sword, for the wrath of iniquities is the sword, in order that you know the plunder."
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