LEB - Job - 19

19:1   Then Job answered and said,

19:2  “⌞How long⌟ will you torment me and crush me with words?

19:3  These ten times you have disgraced me; you are not ashamed that you have attacked me.

19:4  And what is more, if I have truly erred, my error remains with me.

19:5  If indeed you must magnify yourselves against me, and you must let my disgrace argue against me,

19:6  know then that God has wronged me and has surrounded me with his net.

19:7  “Look, I cry out, ‘Violence!’ but I am not answered; I cry out, but there is no justice.

19:8  He has walled up my way so that I cannot pass; and he has set darkness upon my paths.

19:9  He has taken my glory from me, and he has removed the crown of my head.

19:10  He has broken me down all around, and I am gone. And he has uprooted my hope like a tree,

19:11  and he has kindled his wrath against me, and ⌞he has counted me as one of his foes⌟.

19:12  His troops have come together and have thrown up their rampart against me and have encamped around my tent.

19:13  “He has removed my kinsfolk from me, and my acquaintances have only turned aside from me.

19:14  My relatives have failed, and my close friends have forgotten me.

19:15  The sojourners in my house and my slave women count me as a stranger; I have become a foreigner in their eyes.

19:16  I call to my servant, but he does not answer; I must ⌞personally⌟ plead with him.

19:17  My breath is repulsive to my wife, and I am loathsome to ⌞my own family⌟.

19:18  Little boys also despise me; when I rise, then they talk against me.

19:19  All ⌞my intimate friends⌟ abhor me, and these whom I have loved have turned against me.

19:20  My bones cling to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.

19:21  “Pity me, pity me, you my friends, for God’s hand has touched me.

19:22  Why do you pursue me like God? And are not satisfied with my flesh?

19:23  “⌞O that⌟ my words could be written down! ⌞O that they could be inscribed in a scroll⌟!

19:24  That with a pen of iron and with lead they might be engraved on a rock forever!

19:25  But I myself know that my redeemer is alive, and at the last he will stand up upon ⌞the earth⌟.

19:26  And after my skin has been thus destroyed, but from my flesh I will see God,

19:27  whom ⌞I will see for myself⌟, and whom my eyes will see and not a stranger. ⌞My heart faints within me⌟.

19:28  “If you say, ‘How will we persecute him?’ And ‘The root of the trouble is found’ in me,

19:29  be afraid for yourselves ⌞because of the sword⌟, for wrath brings punishment by the sword, so that you may know that there is judgment.”