2.3 KiB
Job's Reply to Bildad
Chapter 19
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Then Job answered:
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How long will you torment me and crush me with words?
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You have humiliated me ten times now, and you mistreat me without shame.
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Even if it is true that I have sinned, my mistake concerns only me.
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If you really want to appear superior to me and would use my disgrace as evidence against me,
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then understand that it is God who has wronged me and caught me in his net.
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I cry out, "Violence!" but get no response; I call for help, but there is no justice.
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He has blocked my way so that I cannot pass through; he has veiled my paths with darkness.
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He has stripped me of my honor and removed the crown from my head.
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He tears me down on every side so that I am ruined. He uproots my hope like a tree.
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His anger burns against me, and he regards me as one of his enemies.
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His troops advance together; they construct a ramp against me and camp around my tent.
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He has removed my brothers from me; my acquaintances have abandoned me.
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My relatives stop coming by, and my close friends have forgotten me.
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My house guests and female servants regard me as a stranger; I am a foreigner in their sight.
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I call for my servant, but he does not answer, even if I beg him with my own mouth.
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My breath is offensive to my wife, and my own family finds me repulsive.
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Even young boys scorn me. When I stand up, they mock me.
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All of my best friends despise me, and those I love have turned against me.
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My skin and my flesh cling to my bones; I have escaped with only the skin of my teeth.
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Have mercy on me, my friends, have mercy, for God's hand has struck me.
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Why do you persecute me as God does? Will you never get enough of my flesh?
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I wish that my words were written down, that they were recorded on a scroll
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or were inscribed in stone forever by an iron stylus and lead!
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But I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the end he will stand on the dust.
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Even after my skin has been destroyed, yet I will see God in my flesh.
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I will see him myself; my eyes will look at him, and not as a stranger. My heart longs within me.
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If you say, "How will we pursue him, since the root of the problem lies with him?"
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then be afraid of the sword, because wrath brings punishment by the sword, so that you may know there is a judgment.