Job’s Reply to Bildad

¹Then Job answered:

²How long will you torment me

and crush me with words?

³You have humiliated me ten times now,

and you mistreat me without shame.

⁴Even if it is true that I have sinned,

my mistake concerns only me.

⁵If you really want to appear superior to me[#19:5 Ps 35:26; 38:16; 55:12]

and would use my disgrace as evidence against me,

⁶then understand that it is God who has wronged me

and caught me in his net.

⁷I cry out, “Violence! ” but get no response;[#19:7 Jb 30:20; Lm 3:8; Hab 1:2]

I call for help, but there is no justice.

⁸He has blocked my way so that I cannot pass through;[#19:8 Jb 3:23; Lm 3:9; Hs 2:6]

he has veiled my paths with darkness.

⁹He has stripped me of my honor

and removed the crown from my head.

¹⁰He tears me down on every side so that I am ruined.[#19:10 Lit gone]

He uproots my hope like a tree.

¹¹His anger burns against me,[#19:11 Jb 16:9; 21:17; 40:11]

and he regards me as one of his enemies.

¹²His troops advance together;

they construct a ramp against me

and camp around my tent.

¹³He has removed my brothers from me;

my acquaintances have abandoned me.

¹⁴My relatives stop coming by,

and my close friends have forgotten me.

¹⁵My house guests and female servants regard me as a stranger;[#19:15 Or The resident aliens in my household]

I am a foreigner in their sight.

¹⁶I call for my servant, but he does not answer,

even if I beg him with my own mouth.

¹⁷My breath is offensive to my wife,

and my own family finds me repulsive.

¹⁸Even young boys scorn me.

When I stand up, they mock me.

¹⁹All of my best friends despise me,[#19:19 Lit of the men of my council; #19:19 Jb 30:10; Ps 89:38; Am 5:10]

and those I love have turned against me.

²⁰My skin and my flesh cling to my bones;

I have escaped with only the skin of my teeth.

²¹Have mercy on me, my friends, have mercy,[#19:21 Jb 6:14; Ps 38:11; Pr 17:17]

for God’s hand has struck me.

²²Why do you persecute me as God does?

Will you never get enough of my flesh?

²³I wish that my words were written down,

that they were recorded on a scroll

²⁴or were inscribed in stone forever

by an iron stylus and lead!

²⁵But I know that my Redeemer lives, ,[#19:25 Or know my living Redeemer; #19:25 Jb 16:19; Pr 23:11; Jr 50:34]

and at the end he will stand on the dust.

²⁶Even after my skin has been destroyed,[#19:26 Lit skin which they destroyed , or skin they destroyed in this way]

yet I will see God in my flesh.

²⁷I will see him myself;

my eyes will look at him, and not as a stranger.

My heart longs within me.

²⁸If you say, “How will we pursue him,

since the root of the problem lies with him? ”

²⁹then be afraid of the sword,

because wrath brings punishment by the sword,

so that you may know there is a judgment.