² Job: O how long! How long will you torture me and pound me with your chatter?
³     What is it now? Eight times? Nine times?
        No, surely it’s ten times you have insulted me.
        Ten times you’ve shamelessly acted to harm me.
⁴     Even if I have erred, my faults lie with me alone.
⁵     However, if you must exalt yourselves at my expense,
        if you must proffer my own disgrace as evidence against me,
⁶     Then you ought at least to know that I have been wronged by God.
        Yes, His net is closed about me.

⁷     Look! I cry out, “Violence!” but no response comes.
        I shout for help, but justice eludes me.
⁸     He is a roadblock. He will not let me pass;
        He has covered my roads in darkness.
⁹     He has stripped me of my honor,
        torn the crown off my head.
¹⁰     He comes at me from all sides, but I attempt to leave;
        He rips out my hope as if it were a tree in dry ground.
¹¹     His anger burns white-hot against me,
        and He considers me His enemy.
¹²     His militia arrives to raise a siege ramp against me
        and to surround my dwelling.

¹³     He has driven my relatives far from me;
        I am cut off from my friends.
¹⁴     My entire family has failed me;
        my best friends have forgotten me.
¹⁵     Everyone in my house, including my maidservants,
        treats me like an outsider;
        I am a stranger to them now.
¹⁶     When I send for my servant, he does not come.
        I even plead with him with my own voice.
¹⁷     My breath is strange; even my wife avoids me;
        I’m loathsome to my relatives; they can’t stand to be around me.
¹⁸     Even young children taunt me,
        and when I seek to rise, they mock me.
¹⁹     My closest friends can no longer bear me,
        and anyone I have ever loved has turned against me.
²⁰     I am reduced to skin and bones;
        I have barely escaped by the skin of my teeth.
²¹     Show me your pity, my friends, show me your pity!
        For truly, I have been struck by the hand of God.
²²     Why do you pursue me as God has done?
        Is my emaciated body not satisfying enough for you?

²³     What I would give to have my words taken down,
        to have them inscribed for posterity on a scroll.
²⁴     No! More than that!
    To have them chiseled with iron filled with lead—
        carved in stone for all eternity.
²⁵     Besides, I know my Redeemer lives,
        and in the end He will rise and take His stand on the earth.
²⁶     And though my skin has been stripped off,
        still, in my flesh, I will see God.
²⁷     I, myself, will see Him:
        not some stranger, but actually me, with these eyes.
        Toward this end, my deepest longings pine away within my chest.

²⁸ Job: If you ask, “How will we pursue him
        since the root cause of his suffering lies in him?”
²⁹     You ought to fear the sword yourselves;
        for the sword bears fury’s punishment
        in order that you might realize there is, in fact, a judgment.