Job 19

Job 19

Job Replies: I Know That My Vindicator Lives

¹Then Job answered:

²“How long will you torment me

and break me in pieces with words?

³These ten times you have cast reproach upon me;

are you not ashamed to wrong me?

⁴And even if it is true that I have erred,[#Job 6.24]

my error remains with me.

⁵If indeed you magnify yourselves against me[#Ps 35.26; 38.16]

and make my humiliation an argument against me,

⁶know then that God has put me in the wrong[#Job 18.8–10; 27.2]

and closed his net around me.

⁷Even when I cry out, ‘Violence!’ I am not answered;[#Job 30.20]

I call aloud, but there is no justice.

⁸He has walled up my way so that I cannot pass,[#Job 3.23; 30.26]

and he has set darkness upon my paths.

⁹He has stripped my glory from me[#Ps 89.39, 44]

and taken the crown from my head.

¹⁰He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone;[#Job 7.6; 12.14; 24.20]

he has uprooted my hope like a tree.

¹¹He has kindled his wrath against me[#Job 13.24; 16.9]

and counts me as his adversary.

¹²His troops come on together;[#Job 30.12]

they have thrown up siegeworks against me

and encamp around my tent.

¹³“He has put my family far from me,

and my acquaintances are wholly estranged from me.

¹⁴My relatives and my close friends have failed me;

¹⁵the guests in my house have forgotten me;[#Gen 14.14; Eccl 2.7]

my female servants count me as a stranger;

I have become an alien in their eyes.

¹⁶I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer;

I must myself plead with him.

¹⁷My breath is repulsive to my wife;

I am loathsome to my own family.

¹⁸Even young children despise me;[#2 Kings 2.23]

when I rise, they talk against me.

¹⁹All my intimate friends abhor me,[#Ps 38.11; 55.13]

and those whom I love have turned against me.

²⁰My bones cling to my skin and to my flesh,[#Job 33.21; Ps 102.5]

and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.

²¹Have pity on me, have pity on me, O you my friends,[#Job 6.14; Ps 38.2]

for the hand of God has touched me!

²²Why do you, like God, pursue me,[#Job 16.11]

never satisfied with my flesh?

²³“O that my words were written down![#Isa 30.8]

O that they were inscribed in a book!

²⁴O that with an iron pen and with lead[#Jer 17.1]

they were engraved on a rock forever!

²⁵For I know that my vindicator lives[#Job 16.19; Ps 78.35; Isa 43.14; Jer 50.34; #19.25 Or redeemer]

and that in the end he will stand upon the earth;

²⁶and after my skin has been destroyed,[#Mt 5.8; 1 Cor 13.12; 1 Jn 3.2]

then in my flesh I shall see God,

²⁷whom I shall see on my side,[#Ps 73.26]

and my eyes shall behold, and not another.

My heart faints within me!

²⁸If you say, ‘How we will persecute him!’[#Ps 69.26]

and, ‘The root of the matter is found in him,’

²⁹be afraid of the sword,[#Job 22.4]

for wrath brings the punishment of the sword,

so that you may know there is a judgment.”