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?^(A)
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.^(B)
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 refrain, how much of it leaves me?
⁷ Surely now God has worn me out;
    he has^[a] made desolate all my company.^(C)
8 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)
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.^(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)

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

⁶ “He has made me a byword of the peoples,
    and I am one before whom people spit.^(V)
7 My eye has grown dim from grief,
    and all my members are like a shadow.^(W)
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 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)