Job 16

2 “I have heard many things like this.

Comforters of misery, all of you.

3 What of it? Is there any order in words of wind?

Or what is bothering you, that you keep answering?

4 I could talk the way you do,

if your soul were laid down in the place of mine.

5 Then I would leap on you with words,

and shake my head at you.

6 May there be strength in my mouth,

and I will not spare the moving of my lips.

7 For if I speak, I will not feel the pain of the wound;

and if I keep quiet, how am I wounded any less?

8 But now he has worn me out —

made a fool of me, left me rotting —

9 and you laid hold of me; it became a witness.

My lie stood up in me;

it answered me to my face.

10 In his anger he threw me down;

he ground his teeth at me;

the arrows of his raiders fell on me.

11 He leapt at me with the barbs of his eyes;

with a sharp point he struck me on the jaw;

and all together they ran down on me.

12 For the Lord handed me over into the hands of an unrighteous man,

and threw me down among the ungodly.

13 I was at peace, and he shattered me;

he took me by the hair and tore it out;

he stood me up as a target.

14 They ringed me round, throwing spears into my kidneys and sparing nothing;

they poured my gall out on the ground.

15 They threw me down, fall on top of fall;

strong men ran at me.

16 I sewed sackcloth over my hide,

and my strength was put out in the ground.

17 My belly is burned up with weeping,

and there is a shadow on my eyelids.

18 Yet there was nothing unrighteous in my hands,

and my prayer was clean.

19 Earth, do not cover over the blood of my flesh,

and let there be no resting place for my cry.

20 And now, look: my witness is in the heavens,

and the one who knows my case is in the highest places.

21 May my plea reach the Lord,

and may my eye drip in front of him.

22 Let a man have his case argued before the Lord,

and a son of man with his neighbor.

23 My counted years have come,

and I will go by the road I do not come back on.”