¹Then Job answered,

• ²“How long will you torment me,
• and crush me with words?

• ³You have reproached me ten times.
• You aren’t ashamed that you attack me.

• ⁴If it is true that I have erred,
• my error remains with myself.

• ⁵If indeed you will magnify yourselves against me,
• and plead against me my reproach;

• ⁶know now that God has subverted me,
• and has surrounded me with his net.

• ⁷“Behold, I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard.
• I cry for help, but there is no justice.

• ⁸He has walled up my way so that I can’t pass,
• and has set darkness in my paths.

• ⁹He has stripped me of my glory,
• and taken the crown from my head.

• ¹⁰He has broken me down on every side, and I am gone.
• My hope he has plucked up like a tree.

• ¹¹He has also kindled his wrath against me.
• He counts me among his adversaries.

• ¹²His troops come on together,
• build a siege ramp against me,
• and encamp around my tent.

• ¹³“He has put my brothers far from me.
• My acquaintances are wholly estranged from me.

• ¹⁴My relatives have gone away.
• My familiar friends have forgotten me.

• ¹⁵Those who dwell in my house, and my maids, count me for a stranger.
• I am an alien in their sight.

• ¹⁶I call to my servant, and he gives me no answer.
• I beg him with my mouth.

• ¹⁷My breath is offensive to my wife.
• I am loathsome to the children of my own mother.

• ¹⁸Even young children despise me.
• If I arise, they speak against me.

• ¹⁹All my familiar friends abhor me.
• They whom I loved have turned against me.

• ²⁰My bones stick to my skin and to my flesh.
• I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.

• ²¹“Have pity on me, have pity on me, you my friends;
• for the hand of God has touched me.

• ²²Why do you persecute me as God,
• and are not satisfied with my flesh?

• ²³“Oh that my words were now written!
• Oh that they were inscribed in a book!

• ²⁴That with an iron pen and lead
• they were engraved in the rock forever!

• ²⁵But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives.
• In the end, he will stand upon the earth.

• ²⁶After my skin is destroyed,
• then in my flesh shall I see God,

• ²⁷Whom I, even I, shall see on my side.
• My eyes shall see, and not as a stranger.

• “My heart is consumed within me.

• ²⁸If you say, ‘How we will persecute him!’
• because the root of the matter is found in me,

• ²⁹be afraid of the sword,
• for wrath brings the punishments of the sword,
• that you may know there is a judgment.”