Job 19

Job’s Sixth Speech: A Response to Bildad

¹Then Job answered and said,[#Hebrew “And”]

²“How long will you torment me[#Literally “Until when”; #Plural; #Hebrew “my soul,” or “my self”]

and crush me with words?

³These ten times you have disgraced me;[#Plural]

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,[#Plural]

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;[#Or “and”]

I cry out, but there is no justice.

⁸He has walled up my way so that I cannot pass;[#Hebrew “and”]

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;[#Or “of”]

I have become a foreigner in their eyes.

¹⁶I call to my servant, but he does not answer;[#Hebrew “and”]

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,[#Literally “the men of the circle of my confidants”]

and these whom I have loved have turned against me.

²⁰My bones cling to my skin and to my flesh,[#Collective singular]

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?[#Plural]

And are not satisfied with my flesh?

²³“O that my words could be written down![#Literally “Who then shall give and”]

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,[#Hebrew “And”; #Emphatic personal pronoun]

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,[#Literally “I myself will see for myself”; emphatic personal pronoun as subject to the singular verb]

and whom my eyes will see and not a stranger.

My heart faints within me.

²⁸“If you say, ‘How will we persecute him?’[#Plural]

And ‘The root of the trouble is found’ in me,

²⁹be afraid for yourselves because of the sword,[#Literally “from the faces of the sword”]

for wrath brings punishment by the sword,

so that you may know that there is judgment.”