1Then Iyov answered:
2"How long will you go on making me angry, crushing me with words?
3You've insulted me ten times already; aren't you ashamed to treat me so badly?
4Even if it's true that I made a mistake, my error stays with me.
5"You may take a superior attitude toward me and cite my disgrace as proof against me;
6but know that it's God who has put me in the wrong and closed his net around me.
7If I cry, 'Violence!' no one hears me; I cry aloud, but there is no justice.
8"He has fenced off my way, so that I can't pass; he has covered my paths with darkness.
9He has stripped me of my glory and removed the crown from my head.
10He tears every part of me down - I am gone; he uproots my hope like a tree.
11"Inflamed with anger against me, he counts me as one of his foes.
12His troops advance together, they make their way against me and encamp around my tent.
13"He has made my brothers keep their distance, those who know me are wholly estranged from me,
14my kinsfolk have failed me, and my close friends have forgotten me.
15Those living in my house consider me a stranger; my slave-girls too - in their view I'm a foreigner.
16I call my servant, and he doesn't answer, even if I beg him for a favor!
17"My wife can't stand my breath, I am loathsome to my own family.
18Even young children despise me -if I stand up, they start jeering at me.
19All my intimate friends abhor me, and those I loved have turned against me.
20My bones stick to my skin and flesh; I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.
21"Pity me, friends of mine, pity me! For the hand of God has struck me!
22Must you pursue me as God does, never satisfied with my flesh?
23I wish my words were written down, that they were inscribed in a scroll,
24that, engraved with iron and filled with lead, they were cut into rock forever!
25"But I know that my Redeemer lives, that in the end he will rise on the dust;
26so that after my skin has been thus destroyed, then even without my flesh, I will see God.
27I will see him for myself, my eyes, not someone else's, will behold him. My heart grows weak inside me!
28"If you say, 'How will we persecute him?'-the root of the matter is found in me.
29You had best fear the sword, for anger brings the punishment of the sword, so that you will know there is judgment!"