NRSV Job 19 Chapter
19:1
Then Job answered:
19:2
"How long will you torment me, and break me in pieces with words?
19:3
These ten times you have cast reproach upon me; are you not ashamed to wrong me?
19:4
And even if it is true that I have erred, my error remains with me.
19:5
If indeed you magnify yourselves against me, and make my humiliation an argument against me,
19:6
know then that God has put me in the wrong, and closed his net around me.
19:7
Even when I cry out, 'Violence!' I am not answered; I call aloud, but there is no justice.
19:8
He has walled up my way so that I cannot pass, and he has set darkness upon my paths.
19:9
He has stripped my glory from me, and taken the crown from my head.
19:10
He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone, he has uprooted my hope like a tree.
19:11
He has kindled his wrath against me, and counts me as his adversary.
19:12
His troops come on together; they have thrown up siegeworks against me, and encamp around my tent.
19:13
"He has put my family far from me, and my acquaintances are wholly estranged from me.
19:14
My relatives and my close friends have failed me;
19:15
the guests in my house have forgotten me; my serving girls count me as a stranger; I have become an alien in their eyes.
19:16
I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer; I must myself plead with him.
19:17
My breath is repulsive to my wife; I am loathsome to my own family.
19:18
Even young children despise me; when I rise, they talk against me.
19:19
All my intimate friends abhor me, and those whom I loved have turned against me.
19:20
My bones cling to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.
19:21
Have pity on me, have pity on me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me!
19:22
Why do you, like God, pursue me, never satisfied with my flesh?
19:23
"O that my words were written down! O that they were inscribed in a book!
19:24
O that with an iron pen and with lead they were engraved on a rock forever!
19:25
For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth;
19:26
and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God,
19:27
whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me!
19:28
If you say, 'How we will persecute him!' and, 'The root of the matter is found in him';
19:29
be afraid of the sword, for wrath brings the punishment of the sword, so that you may know there is a judgment."