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Job Reaffirms His Innocence

16 Then Job answered:

“I have heard many such things;
    miserable comforters are you all.
Have windy words no limit?
    Or what provokes you that you keep on talking?(A)
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.(B)
I could encourage you with my mouth,
    and the solace of my lips would assuage your pain.

“If I speak, my pain is not assuaged,
    and if I refrain, how much of it leaves me?
Surely now God has worn me out;
    he has[a] made desolate all my company.(C)
And he has[b] shriveled me up,
    which is a witness against me;
my leanness has risen up against me,
    and it testifies to my face.(D)
He has torn me in his wrath and hated me;
    he has gnashed his teeth at me;
    my adversary sharpens his eyes against me.(E)
10 They have gaped at me with their mouths;
    they have struck me insolently on the cheek;
    they mass themselves together against me.(F)
11 God gives me up to the evil
    and casts me into the hands of the wicked.(G)
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;(H)
13     his archers surround me.
He slashes open my kidneys and shows no mercy;
    he pours out my gall on the ground.(I)
14 He bursts upon me again and again;
    he rushes at me like a warrior.(J)
15 I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin
    and have laid my strength in the dust.(K)
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.(L)

18 “O earth, do not cover my blood;
    let my outcry find no resting place.(M)
19 Even now my witness is in heaven,
    and my advocate is on high.(N)
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[c] one does for a neighbor.(O)
22 For when a few years have come,
    I shall go the way from which I shall not return.(P)

Job Prays for Relief

17 “My spirit is broken; my days are extinct;
    the grave is ready for me.(Q)
Surely there are mockers around me,
    and my eye dwells on their provocation.(R)

“Lay down a pledge for me with yourself;
    who is there who will give surety for me?(S)
Since you have closed their minds to understanding,
    therefore you will not let them triumph.(T)
Those who denounce friends for reward—
    the eyes of their children will fail.(U)

“He has made me a byword of the peoples,
    and I am one before whom people spit.(V)
My eye has grown dim from grief,
    and all my members are like a shadow.(W)
The upright are appalled at this,
    and the innocent stir themselves up against the godless.
Yet the righteous hold to their way,
    and they who have clean hands grow stronger and stronger.(X)
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.(Y)
12 They make night into day;
    ‘The light,’ they say, ‘is near to the darkness.’[d]
13 If I look for Sheol as my house,
    if I spread my couch in darkness,(Z)
14 if I say to the Pit, ‘You are my father,’
    and to the worm, ‘My mother’ or ‘My sister,’(AA)
15 where then is my hope?
    Who will see my hope?(AB)
16 Will it go down to the bars of Sheol?
    Shall we descend together into the dust?”(AC)

Footnotes

  1. 16.7 Heb you have
  2. 16.8 Heb you have
  3. 16.21 Syr Vg Tg: Heb and
  4. 17.12 Meaning of Heb uncertain