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¹ Then Job answered: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 be true that I have erred, my error remains with myself.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 about me.⁷ Behold, I cry out, 'Violence!' but 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 from me my glory, and taken the crown from my head.¹⁰ He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone, and my hope has he pulled up 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 cast up siegeworks against me, and encamp round about my tent.¹³ "He has put my brethren far from me, and my acquaintances are wholly estranged from me.¹⁴ My kinsfolk and my close friends have failed me;¹⁵ the guests in my house have forgotten me; my maidservants 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 beseech him with my mouth.¹⁷ I am repulsive to my wife, loathsome to the sons of my own mother.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 cleave 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? Why are you not satisfied with my flesh?

²³ "Oh that my words were written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book!²⁴ Oh that with an iron pen and lead they were graven in the rock for ever!²⁵ For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at last he will stand upon the earth;²⁶ and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then from my flesh I shall see God,²⁷ whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me!²⁸ If you say, 'How we will pursue 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, that you may know there is a judgment."