Job - Chapter 19 - A Conservative Version
- Then Job answered, and said,
- How long will ye vex my soul, and break me in pieces with words?
- These ten times ye have reproached me. Ye are not ashamed that ye deal hardly with me.
- And be it indeed that I have erred, my error remains with myself.
- If indeed ye will magnify yourselves against me, and plead against me my reproach,
- know now that God has subverted me, and has encompassed me with his net.
- Behold, I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard. I cry for help, but there is no justice.
- He has walled up my way that I cannot pass, and has set darkness in my paths.
- He has stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head.
- He has broken me down on every side, and I am gone. And he has plucked up my hope like a tree.
- He has also kindled his wrath against me. And he considers me to him as his adversaries.
- His troops come on together, and cast up their way against me, and encamp round about my tent.
- He has put my brothers far from me, and my acquaintances are wholly estranged from me.
- My kinsfolk have failed, and my familiar friends have forgotten me.
- Those who dwell in my house, and my maids, reckon me for a stranger; I am an alien in their sight.
- I call to my servant, and he gives me no answer. I entreat him with my mouth.
- My breath is strange to my wife, and my supplication to the sons of my own mother.
- Even young children despise me. If I arise, they speak against me.
- All my familiar friends abhor me, and those whom I loved are turned against me.
- My bone cleaves to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped with the skin of my teeth.
- Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends, for the hand of God has touched me.
- Why do ye persecute me as God, and are not satisfied with my flesh?
- O that my words were now written! O that they were inscribed in a book,
- that they were engraved in the rock forever with an iron pen and lead!
- But as for me I know that my Redeemer lives, and at last he will stand up upon the earth.
- And after my skin, this [body], is destroyed, then outside my flesh I shall see God,
- whom I, even I, shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not as a stranger. My heart is consumed within me.
- If ye say, How we will persecute him! And that the root of the matter is found in me,
- be ye afraid of the sword. For wrath [brings] the punishments of the sword, that ye may know there is a judgment.