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Job answered:
2 “How long will you torment me,
and break me in pieces with words?
3 These ten times you have reproached me;
are you not ashamed to mistreat me?
4 And even if it is true that I have gone astray,
my error remains mine alone.
5 If indeed you will exalt yourselves above me,
and use my disgrace as an argument against me,
6 then know that it is God who has wronged me,
and drawn His net closed around me.
7 “Though I cry out, ‘I have been wronged’,
I do not get an answer;
I cry for help, but there is no justice.
8 He has blocked my way so that I cannot pass;
He has laid darkness upon my paths.
9 He has stripped me of my glory,
and taken the crown from my head.
10 He tears me down on every side, and I am ruined;
He has uprooted my hope like a tree.
11 He has kindled His wrath against me,
and He counts me as one of His enemies.
12 His troops advance together;
they raise up their siege works against me,
and camp around my tent.
13 “He has removed my brothers far from me,
and my acquaintances have disowned me.
14 My relatives have stopped visiting me,
and my close friends have forgotten me.
15 The guests and maidservants in my house regard me as a stranger;
I am counted as a foreigner in their sight.
16 I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer,
though I beg of him with my own mouth.
17 My breath is offensive to my wife,
and I am loathsome to my own brothers.
18 Even young children despise me;
when I stand up, they mock me.
19 All my close friends abhor me,
and those whom I love have turned against me.
20 My skin and my flesh cling to my bones,
and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.
21 “Have mercy on me, my friends,
have mercy on me, for the hand of God has struck me.
22 Why do you persecute me as God does?
Will you never get enough of my flesh?
23 “Oh, that my words were written down,
that they were recorded on a scroll,
24 or they were engraved in the rock forever
with an iron stylus and lead!
25 For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and that He will stand on the earth in the end.
26 Even after my skin has been destroyed,
yet in my flesh I will see God;
27 I will see Him for myself,
with my own eyes—and not someone else.
How my heart yearns within me!
28 “If you say, ‘How we will persecute him,
since the root of the trouble is found in him?’
29 You should be afraid of the sword yourselves;
for wrath brings the punishment of the sword,
and then you will know there is a judgment.”