¹Then Job answered and said, ²“⌞How long⌟ will you torment me and crush me with words? ³These ten times you have disgraced me; you are not ashamed that you have attacked me. ⁴And what is more, if I have truly erred, my error remains with me. ⁵If indeed you must magnify yourselves against me, and you must let my disgrace argue against me, ⁶know then that God has wronged me and has surrounded me with his net. ⁷“Look, I cry out, ‘Violence!’ but I am not answered; I cry out, 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 taken my glory from me, and he has removed the crown of my head. ¹⁰He has broken me down all around, and I am gone. And he has uprooted my hope like a tree, ¹¹and he has kindled his wrath against me, and ⌞he has counted me as one of his foes⌟. ¹²His troops have come together and have thrown up their rampart against me and have encamped around my tent. ¹³“He has removed my kinsfolk from me, and my acquaintances have only turned aside from me. ¹⁴My relatives have failed, and my close friends have forgotten me. ¹⁵The sojourners in my house and my slave women count me as a stranger; I have become a foreigner in their eyes. ¹⁶I call to my servant, but he does not answer; I must ⌞personally⌟ plead with him. ¹⁷My breath is repulsive to my wife, and I am loathsome to ⌞my own family⌟. ¹⁸Little boys also despise me; when I rise, then they talk against me. ¹⁹All ⌞my intimate friends⌟ abhor me, and these whom I have 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. ²¹“Pity me, pity me, you my friends, for God’s hand has touched me. ²²Why do you pursue me like God? And are not satisfied with my flesh? ²³“⌞O that⌟ my words could be written down! ⌞O that they could be inscribed in a scroll⌟! ²⁴That with a pen of iron and with lead they might be engraved on a rock forever! ²⁵But I myself know that my redeemer is alive, and at the last he will stand up upon ⌞the earth⌟. ²⁶And after my skin has been thus destroyed, but from my flesh I will see God, ²⁷whom ⌞I will see for myself⌟, and whom my eyes will see and not a stranger. ⌞My heart faints within me⌟. ²⁸“If you say, ‘How will we persecute him?’ And ‘The root of the trouble is found’ in me, ²⁹be afraid for yourselves ⌞because of the sword⌟, for wrath brings punishment by the sword, so that you may know that there is judgment.”