Job 16  New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised Catholic Edition

⁶ ‘If I speak, my pain is not assuaged,
    and if I forbear, how much of it leaves me?
⁷ Surely now God has worn me out;
    he has^[a] made desolate all my company.
⁸ And he has^[b] shrivelled me up,
    which is a witness against me;
my leanness has risen up against me,
    and it testifies to my face.
⁹ He has torn me in his wrath, and hated me;
    he has gnashed his teeth at me;
    my adversary sharpens his eyes against me.
¹⁰ They have gaped at me with their mouths;
    they have struck me insolently on the cheek;
    they mass themselves together against me.
¹¹ God gives me up to the ungodly,
    and casts me into the hands of the wicked.
¹² I was at ease, and he broke me in two;
    he seized me by the neck and dashed me to pieces;
he set me up as his target;
¹³     his archers surround me.
He slashes open my kidneys, and shows no mercy;
    he pours out my gall on the ground.
¹⁴ He bursts upon me again and again;
    he rushes at me like a warrior.
¹⁵ I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin,
    and have laid my strength in the dust.
¹⁶ My face is red with weeping,
    and deep darkness is on my eyelids,
¹⁷ though there is no violence in my hands,
    and my prayer is pure.

¹⁸ ‘O earth, do not cover my blood;
    let my outcry find no resting-place.
¹⁹ Even now, in fact, my witness is in heaven,
    and he that vouches for me is on high.
²⁰ My friends scorn me;
    my eye pours out tears to God,
²¹ that he would maintain the right of a mortal with God,
    as^[c] one does for a neighbour.
²² For when a few years have come,
    I shall go the way from which I shall not return.