Job 19  Amplified Bible, Classic Edition

19 Then Job answered:

² How long will you vex and torment me and break me in pieces with words?

³ These ten times you have reproached me; you are not ashamed that you make yourselves strange [harden yourselves against me and deal severely with me].

⁴ And if it were true that I have erred, my error would remain with me [I would be conscious of it].

⁵ If indeed you magnify yourselves against me and plead against me my reproach and humiliation,

⁶ Know that God has overthrown and put me in the wrong and has closed His net about me.

⁷ Behold, I cry out, Violence! but I am not heard; I cry aloud for help, but there is no justice.

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

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

¹⁰ He has broken me down on every side, and I am gone; my hope has He pulled up like a tree.

¹¹ He has also kindled His wrath against me, and He counts me as one of His adversaries.

¹² His troops come together and cast up their way and siege works against me and encamp round about my tent.

¹³ He has put my brethren far from me, and my acquaintances are wholly estranged from me.

¹⁴ My kinsfolk have failed me, and my familiar friends have forgotten me.

¹⁵ Those who live temporarily in my house and my maids count me as a stranger; I am an alien in their sight.

¹⁶ I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer, though I beseech him with words.

¹⁷ I am repulsive to my wife and loathsome to the children of my own mother.

¹⁸ Even young children despise me; when I get up, they speak against me.

¹⁹ All the men of my council and my familiar friends abhor me; those whom I loved are turned against me.

²⁰ My bone clings to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped with the skin or gums of my teeth.

²¹ Have pity on me! Have pity on me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me!

²² Why do you, as if you were God, pursue and persecute me? [Acting like wild beasts] why are you not satisfied with my flesh?

²³ Oh, that the words I now speak were written! Oh, that they were inscribed in a book [carved on a tablet of stone]!

²⁴ That with an iron pen and [molten] lead they were graven in the rock forever!

²⁵ For I know that my Redeemer and Vindicator lives, and at last He [the Last One] will stand upon the earth.^(A)

²⁶ And after my skin, even this body, has been destroyed, then from my flesh or without it I shall see God,

²⁷ Whom I, even I, shall see for myself and on my side! And my eyes shall behold Him, and not as a stranger! My heart pines away and is consumed within me.

²⁸ If you say, How we will pursue him! [and continue to persecute me with the claim] that the root [cause] of all these [afflictions] is found in me,

²⁹ Then beware and be afraid of the sword [of divine vengeance], for wrathful are the punishments of that sword, that you may know there is a judgment.