Job 19
Job: My Redeemer Lives
¹ Then Job answered:
² “How long will you torment me and crush me with your words?
³ Ten times now you have reproached me; you shamelessly mistreat me.
⁴ Even if I have truly gone astray, my error concerns me alone.
⁵ If indeed you would exalt yourselves above me and use my disgrace against me,
⁶ then understand that it is God who has wronged me and drawn His net around me.
⁷ Though I cry out, ‘Violence!’ I get no response; though I call for help, there is no justice.
⁸ He has blocked my way so I cannot pass; He has veiled my paths with darkness.
⁹ He has stripped me of my honor and removed the crown from my head.
¹⁰ He tears me down on every side until I am gone; He uproots my hope like a tree.
¹¹ His anger burns against me, and He counts me among His enemies.
¹² His troops advance together; they construct a ramp against me and encamp around my tent.
¹³ He has removed my brothers from me; my acquaintances have abandoned me.
¹⁴ My kinsmen have failed me, and my friends have forgotten me.
¹⁵ My guests and maidservants count me as a stranger; I am a foreigner in their sight.
¹⁶ I call for my servant, but he does not answer, though I implore him with my own mouth.
¹⁷ My breath is repulsive to my wife, and I am loathsome to my own family.
¹⁸ Even little boys scorn me; when I appear, they deride me.
¹⁹ All my best friends despise me, and those I love have turned against me.
²⁰ My skin and flesh cling to my bones; I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.
²¹ Have pity on me, my friends, have pity, for the hand of God has struck me.
²² Why do you persecute me as God does? Will you never get enough of my flesh?
²³ I wish that my words were recorded and inscribed in a book,
²⁴ by an iron stylus on lead, or chiseled in stone forever.
²⁵ But I know that my Redeemer 1 lives, and in the end He will stand upon the earth.2
²⁶ Even after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh 3 I will see God.
²⁷ I will see Him for myself; my eyes will behold Him, and not as a stranger. How my heart yearns 4 within me!
²⁸ If you say, ‘Let us persecute him, since the root of the matter lies with him,5’
²⁹ then you should fear the sword yourselves, because wrath brings punishment by the sword, so that you may know there is a judgment.”