¹Then Job answered and said:

²"I have heard many such things; miserable comforters are you all.

³Shall windy words have an end? Or what provokes you that you answer?

⁴I also could speak as you do, if you were in my place; I could join words together against you and shake my head at you.

⁵I could strengthen you with my mouth, and the solace of my lips would assuage your pain.

⁶"If I speak, my pain is not assuaged, and if I forbear, how much of it leaves me?

⁷Surely now God has worn me out; he has made desolate all my company.

⁸And he has shriveled me up, which is a witness against me, and my leanness has risen up against me; it testifies to my face.

⁹He has torn me in his wrath and hated me; he has gnashed his teeth at me; my adversary sharpens his eyes against me.

¹⁰Men have gaped at me with their mouth; they have struck me insolently on the cheek; they mass themselves together against me.

¹¹God gives me up to the ungodly and casts me into the hands of the wicked.

¹²I was at ease, and he broke me apart; he seized me by the neck and dashed me to pieces; he set me up as his target;

¹³his archers surround me. He slashes open my kidneys and does not spare; he pours out my gall on the ground.

¹⁴He breaks me with breach upon breach; he runs upon me like a warrior.

¹⁵I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin and have laid my strength in the dust.

¹⁶My face is red with weeping, and on my eyelids is deep darkness,

¹⁷although there is no violence in my hands, and my prayer is pure.

¹⁸"O earth, cover not my blood, and let my cry find no resting place.

¹⁹Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven, and he who testifies for me is on high.

²⁰My friends scorn me; my eye pours out tears to God,

²¹that he would argue the case of a man with God, as a son of man does with his neighbor.

²²For when a few years have come I shall go the way from which I shall not return.