Job’s Reply to Bildad
1Then Job answered:
2How long will you torment me
and crush me with words?
3You have humiliated me ten times now,
and you mistreat me without shame.
4Even if it is true that I have sinned,
my mistake concerns only me.
5If you really want to appear superior to me
and would use my disgrace as evidence against me,
6then understand that it is God who has wronged me
and caught me in his net.
7I cry out, “Violence!” but get no response;
I call for help, but there is no justice.
8He has blocked my way so that I cannot pass through;
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 so that I am ruined.
He uproots my hope like a tree.
11His anger burns against me,
and he regards me as one of his enemies.
12His troops advance together;
they construct a ramp against me
and camp around my tent.
13He has removed my brothers from me;
my acquaintances have abandoned me.
14My relatives stop coming by,
and my close friends have forgotten me.
15My house guests and female servants regard me as a stranger;
I am a foreigner in their sight.
16I call for my servant, but he does not answer,
even if I beg him with my own mouth.
17My breath is offensive to my wife,
and my own family finds me repulsive.
18Even young boys scorn me.
When I stand up, they mock me.
19All of my best friends despise me,
and those I love have turned against me.
20My skin and my flesh cling to my bones;
I have escaped with only the skin of my teeth.
21Have mercy on me, my friends, have mercy,
for God’s hand 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 written down,
that they were recorded on a scroll
24or were inscribed in stone forever
by an iron stylus and lead!
25But I know that my Redeemer lives,
and at the end he will stand on the dust.
26Even after my skin has been destroyed,
yet I will see God in my flesh.
27I will see him myself;
my eyes will look at him, and not as a stranger.
My heart longs within me.
28If you say, “How will we pursue him,
since the root of the problem lies with him?”
29then be afraid of the sword,
because wrath brings punishment by the sword,
so that you may know there is a judgment.