1Then Job answered:
2“I have heard many such things;
miserable comforters are you all.
3Have windy words no limit?[#Job 6.26]
Or what provokes you that you keep on talking?
4I also could talk as you do,[#Ps 22.7; 109.25; Lam 2.15; Mt 27.39]
if you were in my place;
I could join words together against you
and shake my head at you.
5I could encourage you with my mouth,
and the solace of my lips would assuage your pain.
6“If I speak, my pain is not assuaged,
and if I refrain, how much of it leaves me?
7Surely now God has worn me out;[#Job 7.3]
he has made desolate all my company.
8And he has shriveled me up,[#Job 10.17; 19.20; #16.8 Heb you have]
which is a witness against me;
my leanness has risen up against me,
and it testifies to my face.
9He has torn me in his wrath and hated me;[#Job 13.24; Ps 35.16]
he has gnashed his teeth at me;
my adversary sharpens his eyes against me.
10They have gaped at me with their mouths;[#Ps 22.13; 35.15; Lam 3.30; Mic 5.1]
they have struck me insolently on the cheek;
they mass themselves together against me.
11God gives me up to the evil[#Job 1.15, 17]
and casts me into the hands of the wicked.
12I was at ease, and he broke me in two;[#Job 9.17]
he seized me by the neck and dashed me to pieces;
he set me up as his target;
13his archers surround me.[#Job 19.12; 20.25; 27.22]
He slashes open my kidneys and shows no mercy;
he pours out my gall on the ground.
14He bursts upon me again and again;[#Job 9.17; Joel 2.7]
he rushes at me like a warrior.
15I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin[#Gen 37.34; Job 30.19]
and have laid my strength in the dust.
16My face is red with weeping,
and deep darkness is on my eyelids,
17though there is no violence in my hands,[#Job 27.4]
and my prayer is pure.
18“O earth, do not cover my blood;[#Ps 66.18, 19; Isa 26.21]
let my outcry find no resting place.
19Even now my witness is in heaven,[#Rom 1.9]
and my advocate is on high.
20My friends scorn me;
my eye pours out tears to God,
21that he would maintain the right of a mortal with God,[#1 Kings 8.45; Ps 9.4]
as one does for a neighbor.
22For when a few years have come,[#Eccl 12.5]
I shall go the way from which I shall not return.