1He answered Job and said.2I have heard many such things, you comforters who only add to my toil.3Is there an end to words of wind? Or what provokes you that you answer?4Also, I could speak to you as you would speak to him—if your nephesh were under my nephesh, I would join with you in words, and I would shake my head over you.5I would strengthen you with my mouth, and the nodding of my lips would comfort you—it would grow dark.6If I speak, my pain does not grow dark, and if I cease—what will go from me?7But now you have surely exhausted all my testimony.8You have shriveled me up. It is registered, and he has raised up lies against me before my oppressor.9His anger has torn me, and he has borne a grudge against me. My enemy gnashes at me with his teeth. He sharpens his eyes against me.10They opened their mouths wide against me; they struck my cheeks with reproach; they are filled against me together.11He has handed me over to a god of the guilty, and into the hand of the wicked he drags me.12I was at peace, and he shook me apart. He seized my neck, shattered me, and set me up for himself as a target.13His arrows surround me. His chief officer pierces my kidneys and does not spare; he pours out my bitterness to earth.14He breaks me through with a breach upon the face of a breach; he runs against me like a mighty man.15I have sewn sackcloth on my skin and have cast my horn in the dust.16My face has reddened from my weeping, and deep darkness is upon my eyelids, a shadow of death.17No violence in my palms, and my prayer pure.18Earth, do not cover my blood, and let there be no place for my outcry.19Even now, behold, my witness is in the heavens, and my witnesses are in the heights.20My advocates of moral evil to God, my eye has dripped.21And he argues for a man with God, and a son of man for his companion.22For the number of years they will come to him, and I will not return; I will go.
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Chapter 17
1My spirit's birth pangs—my days have grown faint; the grave is mine.2If not, mockers are with me, and in their rebellions my eyes lodge.3Put up security for me with yourself; who is there who will strike hands with me?4For you have hidden understanding from their heart—on this account you will not exalt them.5He will tell to divide evils, and the eyes of his sons will fail.6He has made me a proverb of the peoples, and I will be spat upon in their faces.7And my eyes have dimmed from anger, and my forms are like a shadow, all of them.8The righteous are appalled at this, and the innocent one is horrified at the impious one.9And the one who grasps the righteous his way adds strength to the ritual purification of hands.10But all of you, return and come now, and I will not find among you a skilled artisan.11My days have passed; my plans are torn away, the possessions of my heart.12They make night into day; light is near in the face of darkness.13If I wait for Sheol, my house is in darkness; I have spread my bed in it.14To the pit I called, "You are my father; to the worm, 'My mother and my sister.'"15Where then is my hope? Who will see it?16Will they go down to the house of Sheol together, resting on the dust?