Then Job answered and said,

I have heard many such things; Troubling comforters are you all.

Do words of wind have an end? Or what has provoked you that you so respond?

I also could speak like you, If your soul were in my soul's stead; I could join my words together against you And shake my head at you.

I could strengthen you with my mouth, And the movement of my lips would mitigate your pain.

If I speak, my pain is not mitigated; And if I forbear, how much departs from me?

But now He has worn me out; You have desolated all my company.

And You have seized me; it is a testimony against me; And my leanness rises up against me; it testifies to my face.

In His wrath He has torn me to pieces and been adverse toward me; He has gnashed His teeth at me. My Adversary sharpens His eyes at me.

With their mouth they gape at me; They strike my cheek reproachfully; They mass themselves together against me.

God has delivered me over to the unjust And cast me down into the hands of the wicked.

I was at ease, and He broke me apart; Indeed He took me by my neck and dashed me to pieces. And He set me up as His target;

His archers surrounded me; He split open my kidneys and did not desist; He poured out my gall upon the earth.

He broke me open with breach upon breach; He ran at me like a mighty man of war.

I have sewn sackcloth upon my skin And have cast my horn into the dust.

My face is reddened with weeping, And on my eyelids is the shadow of death;

Though there is no violence in my hands, And my prayer is pure.

O earth, do not cover my blood; And let there be no resting place for my crying out.

Even now, there in heaven is my Witness, And He who vouches for me is in the heights.

My friends deride me; My eye pours out tears to God,

That He would plead for a man in his case with God And for a son of man in his case with his neighbor.

For when years few in number have come, I will go the way from which I cannot return.