Old Testament · Poetry and wisdom

Job chapter 19

Then Job answered: will you keep , crushing me to pieces with words? now you have shamed me. You wrong me and feel nothing about it.And if it’s true that I’ve gone wrong, my mistake , not yours.But if you’re going to make yourselves tall over me and use my disgrace as your ,then know this — God is the one who has , and it is his that has closed around me.Look — I scream “” and nobody answers. I shout for help and there is no .He has walled off my road so I can’t get through; he has laid across my paths.He has stripped off me and lifted the crown from my head.He tears me down on every side until I’m gone; he like a tree.His anger burns hot against me; he counts me as one of his enemies.His troops come on together. They throw up a against me and pitch their camp all around .He has driven my brothers away from me. The people who knew me are strangers now.My relatives have quit on me. My closest friends have forgotten me.The and the women who work for me count me as an outsider. In their eyes I’m a foreigner.I call my servant and he doesn’t answer. I have to beg him with my own mouth.My breath is foul to my wife. I turn the stomachs of my own brothers, .Even the small boys have no use for me. When I stand up, they mock me.Every man I can’t stand the sight of me. The ones I loved have turned on me.My bones stick to my skin and my flesh. I have gotten out with .Have mercy on me, have mercy on me, you are supposed to be my friends — .Why do you hunt me down the way God does? Why can’t you ?I wish someone would . I wish they were carved into a scroll —cut with an , sunk into rock for good.But I know that is alive, and at the end he will .And after my skin has been peeled off me, I will God.I will see him for myself. My own eyes will see him — not a stranger’s. is worn out with waiting for it.If you’re saying, “Look how we’ll run him down — is in him,”then you had better be afraid of the sword yourselves. Rage like that is what the sword is sent to punish. Then you’ll know there is .