1. Then Job answered and said,
2. How long will you trouble my soul, and break me in pieces with words?
3. These ten times have you reproached me: you are not ashamed that you act like strangers to me.
4. And if I indeed have erred, my error remains with myself.
5. If indeed you will magnify yourselves against me, and use my reproach as a witness against me:
6. Know now that God has overthrown me, and has surrounded me with his net.
7. Behold, I cry out concerning wrong, but I am not heard: I cry aloud, but there is no judgment.
8. He has fenced up my way so that I cannot pass, and he has set darkness in my paths.
9. He has stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head.
10. He has destroyed me on every side, and I am gone: and my hope has he removed like a tree.
11. He has also kindled his anger against me, and he considers me as one of his enemies.
12. His troops come together, and build up their pathway against me, and encamp round about my tabernacle.
13. He has put my brethren far from me, and my acquaintances are indeed estranged from me.
14. My kinfolk have left, and my familiar friends have forgotten me.
15. Those who dwell in my house, and my maids, consider me as a stranger: I am an alien in their sight.
16. I called my servant, and he gave me no answer; I appealed to him with my mouth.
17. My breath is strange to my wife, though I appealed to her for the sake of the children of my own body.
18. Yea, young children despised me; I arose, and they spoke against me.
19. All my close friends abhorred me: and they whom I loved have turned against me.
20. My bone sticks to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped with the skin 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 persecute me as God, and are not satisfied with my flesh?
23. Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book!
24. That they were engraved with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever!
25. For I know that my redeemer lives, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth:
26. And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God:
27. Whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another; though my inward parts be consumed within me.
28. But you should say, Why do we persecute him, seeing the root of the matter is found in me?
29. You should be afraid of the sword: for anger brings the punishments of the sword, so that you may know there is a judgment.
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