Job 19
1TO this Job replied:
2How long will you make my soul sorrowful? You are indeed destroying me with words. Know at least—because the Lord hath dealt thus with me,
3you speak against me—without shame you fall upon me.
4Take it for granted that I have erred (though my error remaineth with myself) in speaking words which I ought not: and that my words are erroneous and unseasonable: but granted also,
5that you magnify yourselves against me, and insult me with reproach.
6Know then, That it is the Lord Who hath terrified me, and raised His bulwark against me.
7Behold I laugh at reproach—I will not speak—I will cry aloud, There is no judgment.
8I am fenced about and cannot get out. Before me He hath placed darkness.
9He hath stripped me of my glory, and hath taken the crown from my head.
10He broke me on every side and I fled: and He hath cut down my hope like a tree.
11When He exercised great wrath against me, and counted me as an enemy:
12With one consent His troops fell upon me; they who were in ambush beset my ways.
13My brethren stood aloof from me, they acknowledged strangers rather than me; and my friends were not compassionate.
14My nearest relations paid me no attention: and they who knew my name forgot me.
15As for my domestics and maid servants, in their view I was a stranger.
16When I called my servant, he did not answer me.
17When with my mouth I entreated and supplicated my wife, and called affectionately the children of my concubines:
18they renounced me forever. When I insist, they speak against me.
19They who saw me, abhorred me; and they whom I loved rose up against me.
20The flesh next my skin became rotten, and my bones begin to be corroded.
21Pity me, pity me, O my friends, for the hand of the Lord hath touched me.
22Why do you persecute me as the Lord doth, and are not satisfied with my flesh?
23O that my words were written and recorded in a book forever!
24That they were engraven with a graver of iron on lead, or on rocks!
25For I know that He is eternal,
26Who is about to dissolve me on earth, to raise anew this body of mine which suffereth these things.
27For from the Lord those things have been done to me, of which I alone am conscious—which mine eyes have seen, and no other; and which have all been done to me in my bosom.
28Now if you will say, What shall we say against him? And what ground of accusation shall we find in him?
29Stand in awe, I beseech you, of the developing scene; for wrath will come upon the unrighteous, and it shall then be known, where their filthiness is.