1.9 KiB
Job's Fifth Speech: A Response to Eliphaz
Chapter 16
-
Then Job spoke again:
-
"I have heard all this before.
What miserable comforters you are!
- Won't you ever stop blowing hot air?
What makes you keep on talking?
- I could say the same things if you were in my place.
I could spout off criticism and shake my head at you.
- But if it were me, I would encourage you.
I would try to take away your grief.
- Instead, I suffer if I defend myself,
and I suffer no less if I refuse to speak.
- "O God, you have ground me down
and devastated my family.
- As if to prove I have sinned, you've reduced me to skin and bones.
My gaunt flesh testifies against me.
- God hates me and angrily tears me apart.
He snaps his teeth at me
and pierces me with his eyes.
- People jeer and laugh at me.
They slap my cheek in contempt.
A mob gathers against me.
- God has handed me over to sinners.
He has tossed me into the hands of the wicked.
- "I was living quietly until he shattered me.
He took me by the neck and broke me in pieces.
Then he set me up as his target,
- and now his archers surround me.
His arrows pierce me without mercy. The ground is wet with my blood.
- Again and again he smashes against me,
charging at me like a warrior.
- I wear burlap to show my grief.
My pride lies in the dust.
- My eyes are red with weeping;
dark shadows circle my eyes.
- Yet I have done no wrong,
and my prayer is pure.
- "O earth, do not conceal my blood.
Let it cry out on my behalf.
- Even now my witness is in heaven.
My advocate is there on high.
- My friends scorn me,
but I pour out my tears to God.
- I need someone to mediate between God and me,
as a person mediates between friends.
- For soon I must go down that road
from which I will never return.