¹Then Job answered and said,

²“I have heard many arguments like these;

You are all wearisome comforters.

³Is there an end to vain words?

Or what has stimulated you to answer like that?

⁴I too could speak like you,

If only your well-being was in place of my predicament.

I could heap up words against you,

And I could shake my head at you.

⁵Or I could strengthen you with my speech,

Or the utterance of my lips could give you relief.

⁶But when I speak,

My pain is not relieved,

And if I forbear,

In what way does my pain go away?”

⁷“But even now it is distressing me.

You have desolated all my family circle.

⁸And you have made my face wrinkly;

It is a witness.

And the fact that I have become very lean

Testifies to my face.”

⁹“In his wrath he tears me to pieces

And persecutes me.

He gnashes his teeth against me;

My adversary sharpens his eyes against me.

¹⁰People gape at me with their mouths;

They strike my cheek in reproach.

They act completely wantonly.

¹¹God has delivered me to the evil one,

And he has thrown me into the hands of the wicked.

¹²I was at ease,

But he shook me to pieces,

And he took me by the scruff of the neck

And dashed me to smithereens

And set me up as his target.

¹³His archers surround me;

He cleaves my kidneys apart

And does not spare.

He sheds my gall on the ground.

¹⁴He breaks me with rupture upon rupture;

He runs at me like a warrior.

¹⁵I have sewn sackcloth around my skin;

I have to roll my dignity in the dust.

¹⁶My face has become inflamed with weeping,

And the shadow of death is on my eyelids,

¹⁷Not for any violence on my hands,

And my prayer was pure.

¹⁸O earth, do not cover my blood,

And let there be no room for my cry.

¹⁹Even now, behold, my witness is in the heavens,

And he who testifies for me is in the high places.

²⁰Those who mock me are my friends;

My eye sheds tears to God

²¹That someone would plead on behalf of man with God,

As a son of Adam pleads on behalf of his friend.

²²For when a few years have come,

I shall go the way

From which I will not return.”