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Job's Lament and Plea for a Mediator

Job 16:1-17:16

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