✧Then Job answered: ✧2“How long will you torment me and crush me with your words? ✧3Ten times now you have reproached me; you shamelessly mistreat me. ✧4Even if I have truly gone astray, my error concerns me alone. ✧5If indeed you would exalt yourselves above me and use my disgrace against me, ✧6then understand that it is God who has wronged me and drawn His net around me. ✧7Though I cry out, ‘Violence!’ I get no response; though I call for help, there is no justice. ✧8He has blocked my way so I cannot pass; He has veiled my paths with darkness. ✧9He has stripped me of my honor and removed the crown from my head. ✧10He tears me down on every side until I am gone; He uproots my hope like a tree. ✧11His anger burns against me, and He counts me among His enemies. ✧12His troops advance together; they construct a ramp against me and encamp around my tent. ✧13He has removed my brothers from me; my acquaintances have abandoned me. ✧14My kinsmen have failed me, and my friends have forgotten me. ✧15My guests and maidservants count me as a stranger; I am a foreigner in their sight. ✧16I call for my servant, but he does not answer, though I implore him with my own mouth. ✧17My breath is repulsive to my wife, and I am loathsome to my own family. ✧18Even little boys scorn me; when I appear, they deride me. ✧19All my best friends despise me, and those I love have turned against me. ✧20My skin and flesh cling to my bones; I have escaped by the skin of my teeth. ✧21Have pity on me, my friends, have pity, for the hand of God has struck me. ✧22Why do you persecute me as God does? Will you never get enough of my flesh? ✧23I wish that my words were recorded and inscribed in a book, ✧24by an iron stylus on lead, or chiseled in stone forever. ✧25But I know that my Redeemer lives, and in the end He will stand upon the earth. ✧26Even after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God. ✧27I will see Him for myself; my eyes will behold Him, and not as a stranger. How my heart yearns within me! ✧28If you say, ‘Let us persecute him, since the root of the matter lies with him,’ ✧29then you should fear the sword yourselves, because wrath brings punishment by the sword, so that you may know there is a judgment.”