Job 16 - ESV Bible - Then Job answered and said: "I have heard many...

1 Then Job answered and said:

2 "I have heard ¹many such things; ²miserable comforters are you all.

3 Shall ³windy words have an end? Or what provokes you that you answer?

4 I also could speak as you do, if you were in my place; I could join words together against you and ⁴shake my head at you.

5 I could strengthen you with my mouth, and the solace of my lips would assuage your pain.

6 "If I speak, my pain is not assuaged, and if I forbear, how much of it leaves me?

7 Surely now God has worn me out; ⁵he has^a made desolate all my company.

8 And he has shriveled me up, which is ⁶a witness against me, and my ⁷leanness has risen up against me; it testifies to my face.

9 He has ⁸torn me in his wrath ⁹and hated me; he has ¹⁰gnashed his teeth at me; my adversary sharpens his eyes against me.

10 Men have ¹¹gaped at me with their mouth; they have ¹²struck me insolently on the cheek; they ¹³mass themselves together against me.

11 God gives me up to the ungodly and casts me into the hands of the wicked.

12 I was at ease, and he broke me apart; he seized me by the neck and dashed me to pieces; he set me up as his ¹⁴target;

13 his ¹⁵archers surround me. He slashes open my kidneys ¹⁶and does not spare; he ¹⁷pours out my gall on the ground.

14 He breaks me with ¹⁸breach upon breach; he ¹⁹runs upon me like a warrior.

15 I have sewed ²⁰sackcloth upon my skin and have laid ²¹my strength ²²in the dust.

16 My face is red with weeping, and on my eyelids is ²³deep darkness,

17 although there is no ²⁴violence in my hands, and my prayer is pure.

18 "O earth, ²⁵cover not my blood, and let my ²⁶cry find no resting place.

19 Even now, behold, my ²⁷witness is in heaven, and he who testifies for me is ²⁸on high.

20 My friends ²⁹scorn me; my eye pours out tears to God,

21 that he would ³⁰argue the case of a man with God, as^b a son of man does with his neighbor.

22 For when a few years have come I shall go the way ³¹from which I shall not return.

Job 16 ESV