Job 19

1Then Job answered:

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

3Ten times now you have humiliated me; you are not ashamed to treat me as a stranger.

4And even if I truly have gone astray, my error remains with me.

5If indeed you exalt yourselves over me and use my disgrace as evidence against me,

6Know then that God has wronged me and has surrounded me with his net.

7Look, I cry out, “Violence!” but I am not answered; I cry for help, but there is no justice.

8He has walled up my way so that I cannot pass, and he has set darkness upon my paths.

9He has stripped my honor from me and removed the crown from my head.

10He tears me down on every side, and I am gone; he has uprooted my hope like a tree.

11His anger burns against me, and he counts me among his enemies.

12Together his troops come; they build up their road against me, and they camp all around my tent.

13He has driven my brothers far from me, and those who know me are wholly estranged from me.

14My relatives have failed me, and my acquaintances have forgotten me.

15The foreigners living in my house and my female servants count me as a stranger; I have become a foreigner in their eyes.

16I call to my servant, but he does not answer; I plead with him with my own mouth.

17My breath is repulsive to my wife, and I am loathsome to the sons of my own body.

18Even young boys despise me; when I rise, they speak against me.

19All my intimate friends abhor me, and those whom I loved have turned against me.

20My bones cling to my skin and flesh, and I have escaped with the skin of my teeth.

21Have pity on me, have pity on me, you my friends, for the hand of God has struck me.

22Why do you pursue me like God, and never get enough of my flesh?

23If only my words were written down now! If only they were inscribed in a book!

24with an iron stylus and lead, may they be engraved in the rock forever!

25But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the dust.

26And after my skin has been destroyed, yet from my flesh I will see God.

27whom I myself will see for myself, and my eyes will see, and not a stranger. My heart yearns within me.

28If you say, ‘How shall we pursue him, since the root of the matter is found in me?’

29Be afraid of the sword yourselves, for wrath is among the iniquities punished by the sword, so that you may know there is judgment.