Job’s Reply to Eliphaz
1Then Job answered:
2I have heard many things like these.
What provokes you that you continue testifying?
4If you were in my place I could also talk like you.
I could string words together against you
and shake my head at you.
5Instead, I would encourage you with my mouth,
6If I speak, my suffering is not relieved,
and if I hold back, does any of it leave me?
7Surely he16:7 Or it has now exhausted me.
You have devastated my entire family.
8You have shriveled me up16:8 Or have seized me; Hb obscure — it has become a witness;
my frailty rises up against me and testifies to my face.
He gnashes his teeth at me.
My enemy pierces me with his eyes.
10They open their mouths against me
they join themselves together against me.
11God hands me over to the unjust;16:11 LXX, Vg; MT reads to a boy
he throws me to the wicked.
12I was at ease, but he shattered me;
he seized me by the scruff of the neck
and smashed me to pieces.
13his archers16:13 Or arrows surround me.
He pierces my kidneys without mercy
and pours my bile on the ground.
14He breaks through my defenses again and again;16:14 Lit through me, breach on breach
15I have sewn sackcloth over my skin;
16My face has grown red with weeping,
and my prayer is pure.
18Earth, do not cover my blood;
may my cry for help find no resting place.16:18 Gn 4:10; Is 26:21; Ezk 24:7–8
19Even now my witness is in heaven,
20My friends scoff at me
as I weep before God.
just as anyone16:21 Lit a son of man would for a friend.
22For only a few years will pass
before I go the way of no return.
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