Job

 2 “How long will YOU men keep irritating my soul+

And keep crushing me with words?+

 3 These ten times YOU proceeded to rebuke me;

YOU are not ashamed [that] YOU deal so hard with me.+

 4 And, granted that I have made a mistake,+

It is with me that my mistake will lodge.*

 5 If for a fact against me YOU men do put on great airs,+

And YOU show my reproach to be proper against me,+

 6 KNOW, then, that God* himself has misled me,

And his hunting net he has closed in upon me.+

 7 Look! I keep crying out, ‘Violence!’ but I get no answer;+

I keep crying for help, but there is no justice.+

 8 My very path he has blocked with a stone wall,+ and I cannot pass over;

And upon my roadways he puts darkness itself.+

 9 My own glory he has stripped from me,+

And he takes away the crown of my head.

10 He pulls me down on all sides, and I go away;

And he pulls my hope out just like a tree.

11 His anger also grows hot against me,+

And he keeps reckoning me as an adversary of his.

12 Unitedly his troops come and cast up their way against me,+

And they camp round about my tent.

13 My own brothers he has put far away from me,+

And the very ones knowing me have even turned aside from me.

14 My intimate acquaintances* have ceased to be,+

And those known by me have themselves forgotten me,

15 Those residing as aliens in my house;+ and my slave girls themselves reckon me as a stranger;

A real foreigner I have become in their eyes.

16 To my servant I have called, but he does not answer.

With my own mouth I keep imploring him for compassion.

17 My breath* itself has become loathsome to my wife,+

And I have become foul-smelling to the sons of my [mother’s] belly.

18 Also young boys themselves have rejected me;+

Let me but rise up, and they begin to speak against me.

19 All the men of my intimate group detest me,+

And those whom I loved have turned against me.+

20 To my skin and to my flesh my bones actually cleave,+

And I escape with the skin of my teeth.*

21 Show me some favor, show me some favor, O YOU my companions,+

For God’s* own hand has touched me.+

22 Why do YOU men keep persecuting me as God* does,+

And not become satisfied with my very flesh?

23 O that now my words were written down!

O that in a book they were even inscribed!

24 With an iron stylus+ and [with] lead,

Forever in the rock O that they were hewn!

25 And I myself well know that my redeemer*+ is alive,

And that, coming after [me], he will rise up+ over [the] dust.

26 And after my skin, [which] they have skinned off,—this!

Yet reduced in my flesh* I shall behold God,*

27 Whom even I shall behold for myself,+

And [whom] my very eyes will certainly see, but not some stranger.

My kidneys have failed deep within me.

28 For YOU men say, ‘Why do we keep persecuting+ him?’

When the very root of [the] matter is found in me.*

29 Be frightened for yourselves because of a sword,+

For the sword means a raging against errors,

In order that YOU men may know there is a judge.”*+