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