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Job Reaffirms His Innocence

16Then Job answered:
² ‘I have heard many such things;
   miserable comforters are you all.
³ Have windy words no limit?
   Or what provokes you that you keep on talking?
⁴ I also could talk as you do,
   if you were in my place;
I could join words together against you,
   and shake my head at you.
⁵ I could encourage you with my mouth,
   and the solace of my lips would assuage your pain.

⁶ ‘If I speak, my pain is not assuaged,
   and if I forbear, how much of it leaves me?
⁷ Surely now God has worn me out;
   he has^* made desolate all my company.
⁸ And he has^* shrivelled me up,
   which is a witness against me;
my leanness has risen up against me,
   and it testifies to my face.
⁹ He has torn me in his wrath, and hated me;
   he has gnashed his teeth at me;
   my adversary sharpens his eyes against me.
¹⁰ They have gaped at me with their mouths;
   they have struck me insolently on the cheek;
   they mass themselves together against me.
¹¹ God gives me up to the ungodly,
   and casts me into the hands of the wicked.
¹² I was at ease, and he broke me in two;
   he seized me by the neck and dashed me to pieces;
he set me up as his target;
¹³   his archers surround me.
He slashes open my kidneys, and shows no mercy;
   he pours out my gall on the ground.
¹⁴ He bursts upon me again and again;
   he rushes at me like a warrior.
¹⁵ I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin,
   and have laid my strength in the dust.
¹⁶ My face is red with weeping,
   and deep darkness is on my eyelids,
¹⁷ though there is no violence in my hands,
   and my prayer is pure.

¹⁸ ‘O earth, do not cover my blood;
   let my outcry find no resting-place.
¹⁹ Even now, in fact, my witness is in heaven,
   and he that vouches for me is on high.
²⁰ My friends scorn me;
   my eye pours out tears to God,
²¹ that he would maintain the right of a mortal with God,
   as^* one does for a neighbour.
²² For when a few years have come,
   I shall go the way from which I shall not return.

Job Prays for Relief

17My spirit is broken, my days are extinct,
   the grave is ready for me.
² Surely there are mockers around me,
   and my eye dwells on their provocation.

³ ‘Lay down a pledge for me with yourself;
   who is there that will give surety for me?
⁴ Since you have closed their minds to understanding,
   therefore you will not let them triumph.
⁵ Those who denounce friends for reward—
   the eyes of their children will fail.

⁶ ‘He has made me a byword of the peoples,
   and I am one before whom people spit.
⁷ My eye has grown dim from grief,
   and all my members are like a shadow.
⁸ The upright are appalled at this,
   and the innocent stir themselves up against the godless.
⁹ Yet the righteous hold to their way,
   and they that have clean hands grow stronger and stronger.
¹⁰ But you, come back now, all of you,
   and I shall not find a sensible person among you.
¹¹ My days are past, my plans are broken off,
   the desires of my heart.
¹² They make night into day;
   “The light”, they say, “is near to the darkness.”^*
13 If I look for Sheol as my house,
   if I spread my couch in darkness,
¹⁴ if I say to the Pit, “You are my father”,
   and to the worm, “My mother”, or “My sister”,
¹⁵ where then is my hope?
   Who will see my hope?
¹⁶ Will it go down to the bars of Sheol?
   Shall we descend together into the dust?’