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Job Reaffirms His Innocence

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Then Job answered:

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“I have heard many such things;

miserable comforters are you all.

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Have windy words no limit?

Or what provokes you that you keep on talking?

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I also could talk as you do,

if you were in my place;

I could join words together against you,

and shake my head at you.

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I could encourage you with my mouth,

and the solace of my lips would assuage your pain.

 

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“If I speak, my pain is not assuaged,

and if I forbear, how much of it leaves me?

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Surely now God has worn me out;

he has made desolate all my company.

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And he has shriveled me up,

which is a witness against me;

my leanness has risen up against me,

and it testifies to my face.

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He has torn me in his wrath, and hated me;

he has gnashed his teeth at me;

my adversary sharpens his eyes against me.

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They have gaped at me with their mouths;

they have struck me insolently on the cheek;

they mass themselves together against me.

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God gives me up to the ungodly,

and casts me into the hands of the wicked.

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I was at ease, and he broke me in two;

he seized me by the neck and dashed me to pieces;

he set me up as his target;

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his archers surround me.

He slashes open my kidneys, and shows no mercy;

he pours out my gall on the ground.

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He bursts upon me again and again;

he rushes at me like a warrior.

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I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin,

and have laid my strength in the dust.

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My face is red with weeping,

and deep darkness is on my eyelids,

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though there is no violence in my hands,

and my prayer is pure.

 

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“O earth, do not cover my blood;

let my outcry find no resting place.

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Even now, in fact, my witness is in heaven,

and he that vouches for me is on high.

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My friends scorn me;

my eye pours out tears to God,

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that he would maintain the right of a mortal with God,

as one does for a neighbor.

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For when a few years have come,

I shall go the way from which I shall not return.