1 Then Job answered and said,
2 I have heard many such things: miserable comforters are you all.
3 Shall vain words have an end? or what emboldens you that you answer?
4 I also could speak as you do: if your soul were in my soul's place, I could heap up words against you, and shake my head at you.
5 But I would strengthen you with my mouth, and the moving of my lips would relieve your grief.
6 Though I speak, my grief is not relieved: and though I forbear, how am I eased?
7 But now he has made me weary: you have made desolate all my company.
8 And you have filled me with wrinkles, which is a witness against me: and my leanness rising up in me bears witness to my face.
9 He tears me in his wrath, who hates me: he gnashes upon me with his teeth; my enemy sharpens his eyes upon me.
10 They have gaped upon me with their mouth; they have smitten me upon the cheek reproachfully; they have gathered themselves together against me.
11 God has delivered me to the ungodly, and turned me over into the hands of the wicked.
12 I was at ease, but he has broken me asunder: he has also taken me by my neck, and shaken me to pieces, and set me up for his mark.
13 His archers surround me, he slashes my kidneys asunder, and does not spare; he pours out my gall upon the ground.
14 He breaks me with breach upon breach, he runs upon me like a warrior.
15 I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin, and laid my strength in the dust.
16 My face is foul from weeping, and on my eyelids is the shadow of death;
17 Not for any violence in my hands: also my prayer is pure.
18 O earth, cover not my blood, and let my cry have no place.
19 Also now, behold, my witness is in heaven, and my record is on high.
20 My friends scorn me: but my eye pours out tears unto God.
21 O that one might plead for a man with God, as a man pleads for his neighbor!
22 When a few years have come, then I shall go the way where I shall not return.