Job 19:1-29 AMPC

[1] Then Job answered: [2] How long will you vex and torment me and break me in pieces with words? [3] These ten times you have reproached me; you are not ashamed that you make yourselves strange [harden yourselves against me and deal severely with me]. [4] And if it were true that I have erred, my error would remain with me [I would be conscious of it]. [5] If indeed you magnify yourselves against me and plead against me my reproach and humiliation, [6] Know that God has overthrown and put me in the wrong and has closed His net about me. [7] Behold, I cry out, Violence! but I am not heard; I cry aloud for help, but there is no justice. [8] He has walled up my way so that I cannot pass, and He has set darkness upon my paths. [9] He has stripped me of my glory and taken the crown from my head. [10] He has broken me down on every side, and I am gone; my hope has He pulled up like a tree. [11] He has also kindled His wrath against me, and He counts me as one of His adversaries. [12] His troops come together and cast up their way and siege works against me and encamp round about my tent. [13] He has put my brethren far from me, and my acquaintances are wholly estranged from me. [14] My kinsfolk have failed me, and my familiar friends have forgotten me. [15] Those who live temporarily in my house and my maids count me as a stranger; I am an alien in their sight. [16] I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer, though I beseech him with words. [17] I am repulsive to my wife and loathsome to the children of my own mother. [18] Even young children despise me; when I get up, they speak against me. [19] All the men of my council and my familiar friends abhor me; those whom I loved are turned against me. [20] My bone clings to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped with the skin or gums of my teeth. [21] Have pity on me! Have pity on me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me! [22] Why do you, as if you were God, pursue and persecute me? [Acting like wild beasts] why are you not satisfied with my flesh? [23] Oh, that the words I now speak were written! Oh, that they were inscribed in a book [carved on a tablet of stone]! [24] That with an iron pen and [molten] lead they were graven in the rock forever! [25] For I know that my Redeemer and Vindicator lives, and at last He [the Last One] will stand upon the earth. [26] And after my skin, even this body, has been destroyed, then from my flesh or without it I shall see God, [27] Whom I, even I, shall see for myself and on my side! And my eyes shall behold Him, and not as a stranger! My heart pines away and is consumed within me. [28] If you say, How we will pursue him! [and continue to persecute me with the claim] that the root [cause] of all these [afflictions] is found in me, [29] Then beware and be afraid of the sword [of divine vengeance], for wrathful are the punishments of that sword, that you may know there is a judgment.