Job Chapter 19    

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 out for help, but there is no justice.
  ⁸He has walled up my way so that I cannot 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. In their eyes I am a foreigner.
  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 rise up over the dust.
  ²⁶After my skin is destroyed, then in my flesh I will see God,
  ²⁷Whom I, even I, will see on my side. My eyes will see, and not as a stranger. My heart is consumed inside me.
 

²⁸“If 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.”