Job Chapter 16    

¹Then Job answered,
  ²“I have heard many things like these. You are all miserable comforters!
  ³Do your empty words have an end? Or what compels you that you answer?
  ⁴I also could speak like you do. If your soul were in my soul’s place, I could join words together against you, and shake my head at you,
  ⁵but instead I would strengthen you with my mouth. The solace of my lips would relieve you.
 

⁶“Though I speak, my pain is not relieved. And if I hold back, what pain leaves me?
  ⁷But now, God, you have surely worn me out. You have devastated all my group of loved ones.
  ⁸You have shriveled me up. It has become a witness against me. My infirmity rises up against me. It testifies to my face.
  ⁹He has torn me in his wrath and persecuted me. He has gnashed on me with his teeth. My adversary sharpens his eyes on me.
  ¹⁰They have gaped on me with their mouth. They have struck me on the cheek with contempt. They have massed themselves together against me.
  ¹¹God delivers me to the ungodly and casts me into the hands of the wicked.
  ¹²I was at ease, and he broke me apart. Yes, he has taken me by the neck and dashed me to pieces. He has also set me up for his target.
  ¹³His archers surround me. He splits my kidneys apart and does not spare. He pours out my gall on the ground.
  ¹⁴He breaks me with breach on breach. He runs at me like a warrior.
 

¹⁵“I have sewed sackcloth over my skin and have thrust my horn into the dust.
  ¹⁶My face is red with weeping. Deep darkness is on my eyelids,
  ¹⁷although there is no violence in my hands, and my prayer is pure.
 

¹⁸“Earth, do not cover my blood, and may my cry have no resting place.
  ¹⁹Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven, and he who vouches for me is on high.
  ²⁰My friends scoff at me. My eyes pour out tears to God,
  ²¹that he would maintain the right of a man with God, of a son of man with his neighbor!
  ²²For when a few years have come, I will go the way of no return.”