[1] Job's reply: [2] "I have heard all this before. What miserable comforters all of you are. [3] Won't you ever stop your flow of foolish words? What have I said that makes you speak so endlessly? [4] But perhaps I'd sermonize the same as you-if you were I and I were you. I would spout off my criticisms against you and shake my head at you. [5] But no! I would speak in such a way that it would help you. I would try to take away your grief. [6] "But now my grief remains no matter how I defend myself; nor does it help if I refuse to speak. [7] For God has ground me down and taken away my family. [8] O God, you have turned me to skin and bones-as a proof, they say, of my sins. [9] God hates me and angrily tears at my flesh; he has gnashed upon me with his teeth and watched to snuff out any sign of life. [10] These 'comforters' have gaping jaws to swallow me; they slap my cheek. My enemies gather themselves against me. [11] And God has delivered me over to sinners, into the hands of the wicked. [12] "I was living quietly until he broke me apart. He has taken me by the neck and dashed me to pieces, then hung me up as his target. [13] His archers surround me, letting fly their arrows, so that the ground is wet from my blood. [14] Again and again he attacks me, running upon me like a giant. [15] Here I sit in sackcloth; and have laid all hope in the dust. [16] My eyes are red with weeping, and on my eyelids is the shadow of death. [17] "Yet I am innocent, and my prayer is pure. [18] O Earth, do not conceal my blood. Let it protest on my behalf. [19] "Yet even now the witness to my innocence is there in heaven; my advocate is there on high. [20] My friends scoff at me, but I pour out my tears to God, [21] pleading that he will listen as a man would listen to his neighbor. [22] For all too soon I must go down that road from which I shall never return.
