² “I have heard many such things;
    miserable comforters are you all.
³ Shall windy words have an end?
    Or what provokes you that you answer?
⁴ I also could speak as you do,
    if you were in my place;
I could join words together against you
    and shake my head at you.
⁵ I could strengthen you with my mouth,
    and the solace of my lips would assuage your pain.

⁶ “If I speak, my pain is not assuaged,
    and if I forbear, how much of it leaves me?
⁷ Surely now God has worn me out;
    he has^[a] made desolate all my company.
⁸ And he has shriveled me up,
    which is a witness against me,
and my leanness has risen up against me;
    it testifies to my face.
⁹ He has torn me in his wrath and hated me;
    he has gnashed his teeth at me;
    my adversary sharpens his eyes against me.
¹⁰ Men have gaped at me with their mouth;
    they have struck me insolently on the cheek;
    they mass themselves together against me.
¹¹ God gives me up to the ungodly
    and casts me into the hands of the wicked.
¹² I was at ease, and he broke me apart;
    he seized me by the neck and dashed me to pieces;
he set me up as his target;
¹³     his archers surround me.
He slashes open my kidneys and does not spare;
    he pours out my gall on the ground.
¹⁴ He breaks me with breach upon breach;
    he runs upon me like a warrior.
¹⁵ I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin
    and have laid my strength in the dust.
¹⁶ My face is red with weeping,
    and on my eyelids is deep darkness,
¹⁷ although there is no violence in my hands,
    and my prayer is pure.

¹⁸ “O earth, cover not my blood,
    and let my cry find no resting place.
¹⁹ Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven,
    and he who testifies for me is on high.
²⁰ My friends scorn me;
    my eye pours out tears to God,
²¹ that he would argue the case of a man with God,
    as^[b] a son of man does with his neighbor.
²² For when a few years have come
    I shall go the way from which I shall not return.