Job: comforters of misery
1Then Job answered: 2I have heard plenty of this before. Comforters of misery, every one of you! 3Is there no end to windy words? What goads you into answering? 4I too could talk the way you do, if your souls stood where mine stands. I could string speeches together against you and shake my head at you. 5I would brace you with my mouth, and the stirring of my lips would hold your pain back. 6If I speak, my pain is not held back; if I stop, how much of it leaves me? 7But now he has worn me out. You have laid waste my whole circle. 8You have shriveled me up, and it stands as a witness; my gauntness rises against me and testifies to my face. 9His anger has torn me and hunted me down; he has ground his teeth at me. My foe whets his eyes on me. 10They have gaped at me with open mouths; in contempt they struck my cheeks; together they close ranks against me. 11God hands me over to a scoundrel; he flings me into the hands of the wicked. 12I was at ease, and he shattered me; he took me by the neck and smashed me to pieces. He has set me up as his target. 13His archers close in on me. He splits my kidneys open and does not spare; he pours my gall out on the ground. 14He breaks through me, breach upon breach; he charges at me like a warrior. 15I have sewn sackcloth over my skin and thrust my horn into the dust. 16My face is flushed red with weeping, and on my eyelids lies the shadow of death — 17though there is no violence in my hands and my prayer is clean.
My witness is in heaven
18Earth, do not cover my blood, and let my cry have no resting place. 19Even now, look: my witness is in heaven, and the one who vouches for me is on high. 20My friends are my interpreters; my eye drips tears toward Eloah — 21that he might argue the case of a valiant man with Eloah, and of a son of man with his neighbor. 22For the counted years are coming on, and I will go the road I will not come back by.
