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¹ Then Iyov answered:

² "How long will you go on making me angry,
crushing me with words?
³ You've insulted me ten times already;
aren't you ashamed to treat me so badly?
⁴ Even if it's true that I made a mistake,
my error stays with me.

⁵ "You may take a superior attitude toward me
and cite my disgrace as proof against me;
⁶ but know that it's God who has put me in the wrong
and closed his net around me.
⁷ If I cry, ‘Violence!' no one hears me;
I cry aloud, but there is no justice.

⁸ "He has fenced off my way, so that I can't pass;
he has covered my paths with darkness.
⁹ He has stripped me of my glory
and removed the crown from my head.
¹⁰ He tears every part of me down — I am gone;
he uproots my hope like a tree.
¹¹ "Inflamed with anger against me,
he counts me as one of his foes.
¹² His troops advance together,
they make their way against me
and encamp around my tent.

¹³ "He has made my brothers keep their distance,
those who know me are wholly estranged from me,
¹⁴ my kinsfolk have failed me,
and my close friends have forgotten me.
¹⁵ Those living in my house consider me a stranger;
my slave-girls too — in their view I'm a foreigner.
¹⁶ I call my servant, and he doesn't answer,
even if I beg him for a favor!

¹⁷ "My wife can't stand my breath,
I am loathsome to my own family.
¹⁸ Even young children despise me —
if I stand up, they start jeering at me.
¹⁹ All my intimate friends abhor me,
and those I loved have turned against me.
²⁰ My bones stick to my skin and flesh;
I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.

²¹ "Pity me, friends of mine, pity me!
For the hand of God has struck me!
²² Must you pursue me as God does,
never satisfied with my flesh?
²³ I wish my words were written down,
that they were inscribed in a scroll,
²⁴ that, engraved with iron and filled with lead,
they were cut into rock forever!

²⁵ "But I know that my Redeemer lives,
that in the end he will rise on the dust;
²⁶ so that after my skin has been thus destroyed,
then even without my flesh, I will see God.
²⁷ I will see him for myself,
my eyes, not someone else's, will behold him.
My heart grows weak inside me!

²⁸ "If you say, ‘How will we persecute him?' —
the root of the matter is found in me.
²⁹ You had best fear the sword,
for anger brings the punishment of the sword,
so that you will know there is judgment!"