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16Then Job answered: ²“I have heard many such things; miserable comforters are you all. ³Have windy words no limit? Or what provokes you that you keep on talking? ⁴I 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. ⁵I 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? ⁷Surely now God has worn me out; he has made desolate all my company. ⁸And he has shriveled me up, which is a witness against me; my leanness has risen up against me, and it testifies to my face. ⁹He has torn me in his wrath, and hated me; he has gnashed his teeth at me; my adversary sharpens his eyes against me. ¹⁰They have gaped at me with their mouths; they have struck me insolently on the cheek; they mass themselves together against me. ¹¹God gives me up to the ungodly, and casts me into the hands of the wicked. ¹²I 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; ¹³his archers surround me. He slashes open my kidneys, and shows no mercy; he pours out my gall on the ground. ¹⁴He bursts upon me again and again; he rushes at me like a warrior. ¹⁵I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin, and have laid my strength in the dust. ¹⁶My face is red with weeping, and deep darkness is on my eyelids,

¹⁷though 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. ¹⁹Even now, in fact, my witness is in heaven, and he that vouches for me is on high. ²⁰My friends scorn me; my eye pours out tears to God, ²¹that he would maintain the right of a mortal with God, as one does for a neighbor. ²²For when a few years have come, I shall go the way from which I shall not return.

17My spirit is broken, my days are extinct, the grave is ready for me. ²Surely 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? ⁴Since you have closed their minds to understanding, therefore you will not let them triumph. ⁵Those 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. ⁷My eye has grown dim from grief, and all my members are like a shadow. ⁸The upright are appalled at this, and the innocent stir themselves up against the godless. ⁹Yet the righteous hold to their way, and they that have clean hands grow stronger and stronger.

¹⁰But you, come back now, all of you, and I shall not find a sensible person among you. ¹¹My days are past, my plans are broken off, the desires of my heart. ¹²They make night into day; ‘The light,’ they say, ‘is near to the darkness.’ ¹³If I look for Sheol as my house, if I spread my couch in darkness, ¹⁴if I say to the Pit, ‘You are my father,’ and to the worm, ‘My mother,’ or ‘My sister,’ ¹⁵where then is my hope? Who will see my hope? ¹⁶Will it go down to the bars of Sheol? Shall we descend together into the dust?”

18Then Bildad the Shuhite answered: ²“How long will you hunt for words? Consider, and then we shall speak. ³Why are we counted as cattle? Why are we stupid in your sight? ⁴You who tear yourself in your anger— shall the earth be forsaken because of you, or the rock be removed out of its place?

⁵“Surely the light of the wicked is put out, and the flame of their fire does not shine. ⁶The light is dark in their tent, and the lamp above them is put out. ⁷Their strong steps are shortened, and their own schemes throw them down. ⁸For they are thrust into a net by their own feet, and they walk into a pitfall. ⁹A trap seizes them by the heel; a snare lays hold of them. ¹⁰A rope is hid for them in the ground, a trap for them in the path.

¹¹Terrors frighten them on every side, and chase them at their heels. ¹²Their strength is consumed by hunger, and calamity is ready for their stumbling. ¹³By disease their skin is consumed, the firstborn of Death consumes their limbs. ¹⁴They are torn from the tent in which they trusted, and are brought to the king of terrors. ¹⁵In their tents nothing remains; sulfur is scattered upon their habitations. ¹⁶Their roots dry up beneath, and their branches wither above. ¹⁷Their memory perishes from the earth, and they have no name in the street. ¹⁸They are thrust from light into darkness, and driven out of the world. ¹⁹They have no offspring or descendant among their people, and no survivor where they used to live. ²⁰They of the west are appalled at their fate, and horror seizes those of the east. ²¹Surely such are the dwellings of the ungodly, such is the place of those who do not know God.”

19Then Job answered: ²“How long will you torment me, and break me in pieces with words? ³These ten times you have cast reproach upon me; are you not ashamed to wrong me? ⁴And even if it is true that I have erred, my error remains with me. ⁵If indeed you magnify yourselves against me, and make my humiliation an argument against me, ⁶know then that God has put me in the wrong, and closed his net around me. ⁷Even when I cry out, ‘Violence!’ I am not answered; I call aloud, but there is no justice.

⁸He has walled up my way so that I cannot pass, and he has set darkness upon my paths. ⁹He has stripped my glory from me, and taken the crown from my head. ¹⁰He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone, he has uprooted my hope like a tree. ¹¹He has kindled his wrath against me, and counts me as his adversary. ¹²His troops come on together; they have thrown up siegeworks against me, and encamp around my tent. ¹³“He has put my family far from me, and my acquaintances are wholly estranged from me. ¹⁴My relatives and my close friends have failed me; ¹⁵the guests in my house have forgotten me; my serving girls count me as a stranger; I have become an alien in their eyes. ¹⁶I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer; I must myself plead with him. ¹⁷My breath is repulsive to my wife; I am loathsome to my own family. ¹⁸Even young children despise me; when I rise, they talk against me. ¹⁹All my intimate friends abhor me, and those whom I loved have turned against me. ²⁰My bones cling to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth. ²¹Have pity on me, have pity on me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me! ²²Why do you, like God, pursue me, never satisfied with my flesh?

²³“O that my words were written down! O that they were inscribed in a book! ²⁴O that with an iron pen and with lead they were engraved on a rock forever! ²⁵For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; ²⁶and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, ²⁷whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me! ²⁸If you say, ‘How we will persecute him!’ and, ‘The root of the matter is found in him’; ²⁹be afraid of the sword, for wrath brings the punishment of the sword, so that you may know there is a judgment.”