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Then Job answered,
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| 2 |
“How long will you torment me, and crush me with words?
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| 3 |
You have reproached me ten times. You aren’t ashamed that you attack me.
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| 4 |
If it is true that I have erred, my error remains with myself.
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| 5 |
If indeed you will magnify yourselves against me, and plead against me my reproach,
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know now that God has subverted me, and has surrounded me with his net.
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| 7 |
“Behold, I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard. I cry for help, but there is no justice.
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| 8 |
He has walled up my way so that I can’t pass, and has set darkness in my paths.
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| 9 |
He has stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head.
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| 10 |
He has broken me down on every side, and I am gone. He has plucked my hope up like a tree.
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| 11 |
He has also kindled his wrath against me. He counts me among his adversaries.
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| 12 |
His troops come on together, build a siege ramp against me, and encamp around my tent.
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| 13 |
“He has put my brothers far from me. My acquaintances are wholly estranged from me.
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| 14 |
My relatives have gone away. My familiar friends have forgotten me.
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| 15 |
Those who dwell in my house and my maids consider me a stranger. I am an alien in their sight.
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| 16 |
I call to my servant, and he gives me no answer. I beg him with my mouth.
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| 17 |
My breath is offensive to my wife. I am loathsome to the children of my own mother.
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| 18 |
Even young children despise me. If I arise, they speak against me.
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| 19 |
All my familiar friends abhor me. They whom I loved have turned against me.
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| 20 |
My bones stick to my skin and to my flesh. I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.
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| 21 |
“Have pity on me. Have pity on me, you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me.
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| 22 |
Why do you persecute me as God, and are not satisfied with my flesh?
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| 23 |
“Oh that my words were now written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book!
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| 24 |
That with an iron pen and lead they were engraved in the rock forever!
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But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives. In the end, he will stand upon the earth.
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| 26 |
After my skin is destroyed, then I will see God in my flesh,
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| 27 |
whom I, even I, will see on my side. My eyes will see, and not as a stranger. “My heart is consumed within me.
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| 28 |
If you say, ‘How we will persecute him!’ because the root of the matter is found in me,
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| 29 |
be afraid of the sword, for wrath brings the punishments of the sword, that you may know there is a judgment.”
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