² “How long will you torment me
    and break me in pieces with words?
³ These ten times you have cast reproach upon me;
    are you not ashamed to wrong me?
⁴ And even if it be true that I have erred,
    my error remains with myself.
⁵ If indeed you magnify yourselves against me
    and make my disgrace an argument against me,
⁶ know then that God has put me in the wrong
    and closed his net about me.
⁷ Behold, I cry out, ‘Violence!’ but I am not answered;
    I call for help, but there is no justice.
⁸ He has walled up my way, so that I cannot pass,
    and he has set darkness upon my paths.
⁹ He has stripped from me my glory
    and taken the crown from my head.
¹⁰ He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone,
    and my hope has he pulled up like a tree.
¹¹ He has kindled his wrath against me
    and counts me as his adversary.
¹² His troops come on together;
    they have cast up their siege ramp^[a] against me
    and encamp around my tent.

¹³ “He has put my brothers far from me,
    and those who knew me are wholly estranged from me.
¹⁴ My relatives have failed me,
    my close friends have forgotten me.
¹⁵ The guests in my house and my maidservants count me as a stranger;
    I have become a foreigner in their eyes.
¹⁶ I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer;
    I must plead with him with my mouth for mercy.
¹⁷ My breath is strange to my wife,
    and I am a stench to the children of my own mother.
¹⁸ Even young children despise me;
    when I rise they talk against me.
¹⁹ All my intimate friends abhor me,
    and those whom I loved have turned against me.
²⁰ My bones stick to my skin and to my flesh,
    and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.
²¹ Have mercy on me, have mercy on me, O you my friends,
    for the hand of God has touched me!
²² Why do you, like God, pursue me?
    Why are you not satisfied with my flesh?

²³ “Oh that my words were written!
    Oh that they were inscribed in a book!
²⁴ Oh that with an iron pen and lead
    they were engraved in the rock forever!
²⁵ For I know that my Redeemer lives,
    and at the last he will stand upon the earth.^[b]
26 And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
    yet in^[c] my flesh I shall see God,
²⁷ whom I shall see for myself,
    and my eyes shall behold, and not another.
    My heart faints within me!
²⁸ If you say, ‘How we will pursue him!’
    and, ‘The root of the matter is found in him,’^[d]
29 be afraid of the sword,
    for wrath brings the punishment of the sword,
    that you may know there is a judgment.”

² “Therefore my thoughts answer me,
    because of my haste within me.
³ I hear censure that insults me,
    and out of my understanding a spirit answers me.
⁴ Do you not know this from of old,
    since man was placed on earth,
⁵ that the exulting of the wicked is short,
    and the joy of the godless but for a moment?
⁶ Though his height mount up to the heavens,
    and his head reach to the clouds,
⁷ he will perish forever like his own dung;
    those who have seen him will say, ‘Where is he?’
⁸ He will fly away like a dream and not be found;
    he will be chased away like a vision of the night.
⁹ The eye that saw him will see him no more,
    nor will his place any more behold him.
¹⁰ His children will seek the favor of the poor,
    and his hands will give back his wealth.
¹¹ His bones are full of his youthful vigor,
    but it will lie down with him in the dust.

¹² “Though evil is sweet in his mouth,
    though he hides it under his tongue,
¹³ though he is loath to let it go
    and holds it in his mouth,
¹⁴ yet his food is turned in his stomach;
    it is the venom of cobras within him.
¹⁵ He swallows down riches and vomits them up again;
    God casts them out of his belly.
¹⁶ He will suck the poison of cobras;
    the tongue of a viper will kill him.
¹⁷ He will not look upon the rivers,
    the streams flowing with honey and curds.
¹⁸ He will give back the fruit of his toil
    and will not swallow it down;
from the profit of his trading
    he will get no enjoyment.
¹⁹ For he has crushed and abandoned the poor;
    he has seized a house that he did not build.

²⁰ “Because he knew no contentment in his belly,
    he will not let anything in which he delights escape him.
²¹ There was nothing left after he had eaten;
    therefore his prosperity will not endure.
²² In the fullness of his sufficiency he will be in distress;
    the hand of everyone in misery will come against him.
²³ To fill his belly to the full,
    God^[e] will send his burning anger against him
    and rain it upon him into his body.
²⁴ He will flee from an iron weapon;
    a bronze arrow will strike him through.
²⁵ It is drawn forth and comes out of his body;
    the glittering point comes out of his gallbladder;
    terrors come upon him.
²⁶ Utter darkness is laid up for his treasures;
    a fire not fanned will devour him;
    what is left in his tent will be consumed.
²⁷ The heavens will reveal his iniquity,
    and the earth will rise up against him.
²⁸ The possessions of his house will be carried away,
    dragged off in the day of God's^[f] wrath.
²⁹ This is the wicked man's portion from God,
    the heritage decreed for him by God.”

² “Keep listening to my words,
    and let this be your comfort.
³ Bear with me, and I will speak,
    and after I have spoken, mock on.
⁴ As for me, is my complaint against man?
    Why should I not be impatient?
⁵ Look at me and be appalled,
    and lay your hand over your mouth.
⁶ When I remember, I am dismayed,
    and shuddering seizes my flesh.
⁷ Why do the wicked live,
    reach old age, and grow mighty in power?
⁸ Their offspring are established in their presence,
    and their descendants before their eyes.
⁹ Their houses are safe from fear,
    and no rod of God is upon them.
¹⁰ Their bull breeds without fail;
    their cow calves and does not miscarry.
¹¹ They send out their little boys like a flock,
    and their children dance.
¹² They sing to the tambourine and the lyre
    and rejoice to the sound of the pipe.
¹³ They spend their days in prosperity,
    and in peace they go down to Sheol.
¹⁴ They say to God, ‘Depart from us!
    We do not desire the knowledge of your ways.
¹⁵ What is the Almighty, that we should serve him?
    And what profit do we get if we pray to him?’
¹⁶ Behold, is not their prosperity in their hand?
    The counsel of the wicked is far from me.

¹⁷ “How often is it that the lamp of the wicked is put out?
    That their calamity comes upon them?
    That God^[g] distributes pains in his anger?
¹⁸ That they are like straw before the wind,
    and like chaff that the storm carries away?
¹⁹ You say, ‘God stores up their iniquity for their children.’
    Let him pay it out to them, that they may know it.
²⁰ Let their own eyes see their destruction,
    and let them drink of the wrath of the Almighty.
²¹ For what do they care for their houses after them,
    when the number of their months is cut off?
²² Will any teach God knowledge,
    seeing that he judges those who are on high?
²³ One dies in his full vigor,
    being wholly at ease and secure,
²⁴ his pails^[h] full of milk
    and the marrow of his bones moist.
²⁵ Another dies in bitterness of soul,
    never having tasted of prosperity.
²⁶ They lie down alike in the dust,
    and the worms cover them.

²⁷ “Behold, I know your thoughts
    and your schemes to wrong me.
²⁸ For you say, ‘Where is the house of the prince?
    Where is the tent in which the wicked lived?’
²⁹ Have you not asked those who travel the roads,
    and do you not accept their testimony
³⁰ that the evil man is spared in the day of calamity,
    that he is rescued in the day of wrath?
³¹ Who declares his way to his face,
    and who repays him for what he has done?
³² When he is carried to the grave,
    watch is kept over his tomb.
³³ The clods of the valley are sweet to him;
    all mankind follows after him,
    and those who go before him are innumerable.
³⁴ How then will you comfort me with empty nothings?
    There is nothing left of your answers but falsehood.”

⁶ Oh come, let us worship and bow down;
let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!
⁷ For he is our God,
and we are the people of his pasture,
and the sheep of his hand.
Today, if you hear his voice,
⁸ do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah,
as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,
⁹ when your fathers put me to the test
and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.
¹⁰ For forty years I loathed that generation
and said, “They are a people who go astray in their heart,
and they have not known my ways.”
¹¹ Therefore I swore in my wrath,
“They shall not enter my rest.”