Job’s Sixth Speech: A Response to Bildad
19 Then Job answered and said,
2 “How long will you torment me
and crush me with words?
3 These ten times you have disgraced me;
you are not ashamed that you have attacked me.
4 And what is more, if I have truly erred,
my error remains with me.
5 If indeed you must magnify yourselves against me,
and you must let my disgrace argue against me,
6 know 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.
8 He has walled up my way so that I cannot pass;
and he has set darkness upon my paths.
9 He has taken my glory from me,
and he has removed the crown of my head.
10 He has broken me down all around, and I am gone.
And he has uprooted my hope like a tree,
11 and he has kindled his wrath against me,
and he has counted me as one of his foes.
12 His 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.
14 My relatives have failed,
and my close friends have forgotten me.
15 The sojourners in my house and my slave women count me as a stranger;
I have become a foreigner in their eyes.
16 I call to my servant, but he does not answer;
I must personally plead with him.
17 My breath is repulsive to my wife,
and I am loathsome to my own family.
18 Little boys also despise me;
when I rise, then they talk against me.
19 All my intimate friends abhor me,
and these whom I have loved have turned against me.
20 My 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.
22 Why 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!
24 That with a pen of iron and with lead
they might be engraved on a rock forever!
25 But I myself know that my redeemer is alive,
and at the last he will stand up upon the earth.
26 And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
but from my flesh I will see God,
27 whom 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,
29 be afraid for yourselves because of the sword,
for wrath brings punishment by the sword,
so that you may know that there is judgment.”
Footnotes
- Job 19:1
- Job 19:2
- Job 19:2
- Job 19:2
- Job 19:3
- Job 19:3
- Job 19:3
- Job 19:3
- Job 19:5
- Job 19:5
- Job 19:7
- Job 19:7
- Job 19:8
- Job 19:9
- Job 19:11
- Job 19:12
- Job 19:13
- Job 19:15
- Job 19:16
- Job 19:16
- Job 19:17
- Job 19:18
- Job 19:19
- Job 19:20
- Job 19:22
- Job 19:23
- Job 19:23
- Job 19:25
- Job 19:25
- Job 19:25
- Job 19:26
- Job 19:26
- Job 19:27
- Job 19:27
- Job 19:27
- Job 19:28
- Job 19:28
- Job 19:29
- Job 19:29
