1 Then Job answered and said:
2 "How long will you grieve my soul and grind me down with words?
3 Ten times now you have insulted me; you are not ashamed to treat me harshly.
4 Even if I have indeed gone astray, my straying stays with me.
5 If you really mean to exalt yourselves over me and make my shame a case against me,
6 then know that it is God who has wronged me and thrown his net around me.
7 Look, I shout, 'Violence!' and get no answer; I cry for help, and there is no justice.
8 He has fenced off my road so that I cannot pass, and he lays darkness over my paths.
9 He has stripped my glory from me and removed the crown from my head.
10 He tears me down on all sides, and I am gone; he has pulled up my hope like a tree.
11 His anger burns against me, and he reckons me among his foes.
12 His troops advance together; they raise up their road against me and camp all around my tent.
13 My brothers he has removed far from me, and my acquaintances are utter strangers to me.
14 My kinsmen have fallen away, and my intimates have forgotten me.
15 Those who lodge in my house and my maidservants regard me as a stranger; I have become an alien in their sight.
16 I summon my servant, and he does not answer; I have to beg him with my own mouth.
17 My breath is repugnant to my wife, and I am loathsome to the sons of my own body.
18 Even little children scorn me; when I get up, they talk against me.
19 All the men of my inner circle detest me, and those I loved have turned on me.
20 My bones stick to my skin and my flesh, and I have slipped away by the skin of my teeth.
21 Pity me, pity me, you my friends, for the hand of God has struck me!
22 Why do you pursue me as God does? Why are you never sated with my flesh?
23 "Oh, that my words were written down now! Oh, that they were engraved in a book,
24 with a pen of iron and with lead, carved in the rock for all time!
25 For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will rise up upon the dust.
26 And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet from my flesh I shall see God,
27 whom I shall see for myself, and my own eyes shall behold, and no other. My heart is spent within me!
28 If you say, 'How shall we hound him?' and, 'The root of the matter lies in him,'
29 be afraid of the sword yourselves, for wrath brings the penalties of the sword, so that you may know there is a judgment."