1 Then Job answered and said:
2 "I have heard plenty of things like this; miserable comforters are you all!
3 Will words of wind ever end? What goads you to keep answering?
4 I too could talk as you do, if you were in my place; I could join words together against you and wag my head at you.
5 I could encourage you with my mouth, and the comfort of my lips would hold back your pain.
6 If I speak, my pain is not held back; and if I refrain, what of it leaves me?
7 But now he has exhausted me; you have made all my household desolate.
8 You have seized me, and it has become a witness; my gauntness has risen against me and testifies to my face.
9 His wrath has torn me and borne a grudge against me; he grinds his teeth at me; my foe whets his eyes against me.
10 Men have opened their mouths wide at me; they strike my cheek in contempt; they band together against me.
11 God delivers me to the ungodly and tosses me into the hands of the wicked.
12 I was at peace, and he broke me apart; he took me by the neck and smashed me; he set me up as his mark.
13 His arrows ring me round; he pierces my kidneys without mercy; he spills my gall on the ground.
14 He breaches me, breach after breach; he rushes at me like a warrior.
15 I have stitched sackcloth over my skin and laid my horn in the dust.
16 My face is flushed from weeping, and deep darkness lies on my eyelids,
17 though there is no violence in my hands and my prayer is pure.
18 Earth, do not cover up my blood, and let there be no place to rest for my cry.
19 Even now, see, my witness is in heaven, and he who vouches for me is on high.
20 My friends scorn me; to God my eye drips tears,
21 that he would argue a man's case with God, as a son of man does for his neighbor.
22 For a few years will come, and then I will go the road from which I will not return.