Job
Chapter 19
1 Then Job replied and spoke,
2 How long will you trouble me and crush me with your words?
3 You have insulted me ten times; you’re not ashamed that you’ve been treating me like a stranger.
4 If I have truly made a mistake, it stays with me.
5 If you really want to act superior to me and argue against my disgrace:
6 Understand that God has defeated me and has surrounded me with his net.
7 I shout because of injustice, but no one listens; I cry out, but there is no fairness.
8 God has blocked my path so I can’t get through, and has made my ways dark.
9 He has taken away my honor and removed the crown from my head.
10 God has destroyed me on every side, and I am gone; and he has taken away my hope like a tree.
11 He has also ignited his anger against me, and he considers me as one of his enemies.
12 His soldiers gather, march against me, and camp around my tent.
13 He has made my brothers stay away from me, and my friends have truly become strangers to me.
14 My relatives have let me down, and my close friends have ignored me.
15 Those who live in my house and my servants see me as a stranger; I am like a foreigner to them.
16 I called my worker, but he did not respond; I pleaded with him aloud.
17 My wife is disgusted by my breath, even though I pleaded for the sake of my own children.
18 Even young children looked down on me; when I stood up, they talked against me.
19 All my close friends hate me, and those I loved have turned against me.
20 My bones stick to my skin and flesh, and I barely escaped with my life.
21 Feel sorry for me, my friends, because God has struck me.
22 Why do you attack me like God does, and aren’t happy with just hurting my body?
23 I wish my words were written down! I wish they were recorded in a book!
24 They were carved with an iron tool and filled with lead in the rock forever.
25 I know that my savior is alive, and he will stand on the earth on the last day.
26 Even after my skin is eaten by worms and my body is gone, I will still see God with my own body.
27 I will see God myself, my own eyes will look at him, and not a stranger’s; even if I am wasting away inside.
28 But you should ask, “Why do we persecute him, when the heart of the problem lies within me?”
29 Be afraid of the sword: anger brings sword punishments, so you know there is a judgment.