Then Job answered and said,

I have heard many such things;
Troubling comforters are you all.

Do words of wind have an end?
Or what has provoked you that you so respond?

I also could speak like you,
If your soul were in my soul's stead;
I could join my words together against you
And shake my head at you.

I could strengthen you with my mouth,
And the movement of my lips would mitigate your pain.

If I speak, my pain is not mitigated;
And if I forbear, how much departs from me?

But now He has worn me out;
You have desolated all my company.

And You have seized me; it is a testimony against me;
And my leanness rises up against me; it testifies to my face.

In His wrath He has torn me to pieces and been adverse toward me;
He has gnashed His teeth at me.
My Adversary sharpens His eyes at me.

With their mouth they gape at me;
They strike my cheek reproachfully;
They mass themselves together against me.

God has delivered me over to the unjust
And cast me down into the hands of the wicked.

I was at ease, and He broke me apart;
Indeed He took me by my neck and dashed me to pieces.
And He set me up as His target;

His archers surrounded me;
He split open my kidneys and did not desist;
He poured out my gall upon the earth.

He broke me open with breach upon breach;
He ran at me like a mighty man of war.

I have sewn sackcloth upon my skin
And have cast my horn into the dust.

My face is reddened with weeping,
And on my eyelids is the shadow of death;

Though there is no violence in my hands,
And my prayer is pure.

O earth, do not cover my blood;
And let there be no resting place for my crying out.

Even now, there in heaven is my Witness,
And He who vouches for me is in the heights.

My friends deride me;
My eye pours out tears to God,

That He would plead for a man in his case with God
And for a son of man in his case with his neighbor.

For when years few in number have come,
I will go the way from which I cannot return.

My spirit is broken;
My days are extinct;
The graveyard is ready for me.

Surely there are mockers with me,
And my eye lingers on their provocation.

Lay down now a pledge for me with Yourself;
Who is he who will  ¹strike hands with me?

For You have hidden their heart from insight;
Therefore You will not exalt them.

He who denounces his friends for a share of the profit taken,
Even the eyes of his children will fail.

But He has made me a byword of the people,
And I have become one on whom they may spit.

And my eye has grown dim because of the sorrow,
And my members are all like a shadow.

The upright are appalled at this,
And the innocent stir themselves up against the profane man.

Yet the righteous man will hold fast to his way,
And he whose hands are clean will wax yet stronger.

But all of you, come back now,
And I will not find a wise man among you.

My days have passed; broken are my plans,
The cherished thoughts of my heart.

They change night into day;
The light is near, they say in the face of darkness.

If I wait for Sheol as my house;
If I spread my couch in the darkness;

If I call out to the pit, You are my father;
You are my mother and my sister, to the worm;

Where then is my hope?
Indeed, my hope, who will see it?

It will go down to the bars of Sheol,
When, at the same time, we have rest in the dust.

Then Bildad the Shuhite answered and said,

How long will you hunt for words?
Consider, and afterward we will speak.

Why are we considered to be like beasts
And have become unclean in your eyes?

You who tear yourself in your anger,
Will the earth be forsaken for your sake,
Or will the rock be removed from its place?

Indeed the light of the wicked goes out,
And the flame of his fire does not shine.

The light is darkness in his tent,
And his lamp above him goes out.

The steps of his strength are confined,
And his counsel has cast him down.

For he has been cast into a net by his own feet,
And he walks about on the webbing of a pitfall.

A snare grabs him by the heel;
A trap lays hold on him.

A rope is hidden for him on the ground,
And a trap for him, on the path.

Terrors frighten him all around
And chase him at his heels.

His strength is famished,
And calamity is prepared at his side.

It devours the members of his body;
The firstborn of death devours his members.

He is rooted out of his tent, in which he trusts;
And he is made to march to the king of terrors.

That which is not his dwells in his tent;
Brimstone is scattered upon his habitation.

Beneath, his roots are dried up;
And above, his branch is withered.

The memory of him perishes from the earth,
And he has no name on the open plain.

He is thrust out from the light to the darkness
And driven from the world.

He has no posterity and no progeny among his people,
And there are none remaining where he sojourned.

Those who come after will be astonished at his day,
As those who went before were horrified.

Surely these are the dwellings of the unjust,
And this is the place of him who does not know God.