CLV(i)
1 So Job answered and said:
2 I have heard many things like these; Miserable comforters are you all.
3 Will there be an end to such words of wind? Or what is harassing you that you should answer?
4 I myself also could speak like you; O that your soul were in the place of my soul:I would indeed join declarations together against you, And I would indeed wag my head over you.
5 I could make you resolute with my mouth, And the condolence of my lips would keep back grief.
6 When I do speak, my pain is not being kept back, Yet when I do forbear, what pain is going away from me?
7 Surely, now it has made me tired; You have made all my company desolate,
8 And You arrest me. This has become the testimony against me, And it rises against me:That is, my emaciation answers against my face.
9 His anger has found a prey and assailed me; He gnashes at me with His teeth. My foe hones his eyes against me.
10 Men gape at me with their mouth; In reproach they smite my cheeks; They mass themselves together against me.
11 El surrenders me over to an iniquitous man, And He precipitates me into the hands of the wicked.
12 I was at ease, and He quashed me; He held me by the nape of my neck, And He shattered me; He set me up as His target.
13 His multitudes surround me; He splits open my innermost being and does not spare; He pours out my bile on the earth.
14 He breaches upon me, breach adjoining breach; He runs upon me like a master of war.
15 I sewed sackcloth over my hide, And I plowed down my horn into the soil.
16 My face is swollen out from weeping, And on my eyelids is the blackest shadow.
17 Although there is no violence in my palm, And my prayer is pure.
18 O earth, do not cover my blood, And let there be no place for my outcry to rest.
19 Even now, behold, my Witness is in the heavens, And my Guarantor is in the heights.
20 My associates are my mockers; My eye weeps forth to Eloah,
21 That He may plead between a master and Eloah, As between a son of humanity and his associate.
22 For the years of small number have arrived, And I shall go on the path where I shall not return.