Read the Bible

² "How long will you torment me,
    and break me in pieces with words?
³ These ten times you have cast reproach upon me;
    are you not ashamed to wrong me?
⁴ And even if it is true that I have erred,
    my error remains with me.
⁵ If indeed you magnify yourselves against me,
    and make my humiliation an argument against me,
⁶ know then that God has put me in the wrong,
    and closed his net around me.
⁷ Even when I cry out, ‘Violence!' I am not answered;
    I call aloud, but there is no justice.
⁸ He has walled up my way so that I cannot pass,
    and he has set darkness upon my paths.
⁹ He has stripped my glory from me,
    and taken the crown from my head.
¹⁰ He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone,
    he has uprooted my hope like a tree.
¹¹ He has kindled his wrath against me,
    and counts me as his adversary.
¹² His troops come on together;
    they have thrown up siegeworks^[a] against me,
    and encamp around my tent.

¹³ "He has put my family far from me,
    and my acquaintances are wholly estranged from me.
¹⁴ My relatives and my close friends have failed me;
¹⁵     the guests in my house have forgotten me;
my serving girls count me as a stranger;
    I have become an alien in their eyes.
¹⁶ I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer;
    I must myself plead with him.
¹⁷ My breath is repulsive to my wife;
    I am loathsome to my own family.
¹⁸ Even young children despise me;
    when I rise, they talk against me.
¹⁹ All my intimate friends abhor me,
    and those whom I loved have turned against me.
²⁰ My bones cling to my skin and to my flesh,
    and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.
²¹ Have pity on me, have pity on me, O you my friends,
    for the hand of God has touched me!
²² Why do you, like God, pursue me,
    never satisfied with my flesh?

²³ "O that my words were written down!
    O that they were inscribed in a book!
²⁴ O that with an iron pen and with lead
    they were engraved on a rock forever!
²⁵ For I know that my Redeemer^[b] lives,
    and that at the last he^[c] will stand upon the earth;^[d]
26 and after my skin has been thus destroyed,
    then in^[e] my flesh I shall see God,^[f]
27 whom I shall see on my side,^[g]
    and my eyes shall behold, and not another.
    My heart faints within me!
²⁸ If you say, ‘How we will persecute him!'
    and, ‘The root of the matter is found in him';
²⁹ be afraid of the sword,
    for wrath brings the punishment of the sword,
    so that you may know there is a judgment."