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.”