Job 16 - 17 - Legacy Standard Bible

Job 16 - 17

Troublesome Comforters

Then Job answered and said, 2

“I have heard many such things;

Troublesome comforters are you all.

Is there no end to windy words?

Or what pains you that you answer?

I too could speak like you,

If your soul were in the place of my soul.

I could compose words against you

And shake my head at you.

I could encourage you with my mouth,

And the solace of my lips could lessen your pain.

“If I speak, my pain is not lessened,

And if I cease, what will go forth from me?

But now He has exhausted me;

You have made desolate all my company.

You have shriveled me up,

It has become a witness;

And my leanness rises up against me,

It answers to my face.

His anger has torn me and hunted me down;

He has gnashed at me with His teeth;

My adversary sharpens his eyes to look at me.

They have opened their mouth wide at me;

They have struck me on the cheek in reproach;

They have massed themselves against me.

God hands me over to ruffians

And tosses me into the hands of the wicked.

I was at ease, but He shattered me,

And He has grasped me by the neck and shaken me to pieces;

He has also set me up as His target.

His arrows surround me.

Without mercy He splits my kidneys open;

He pours out my gall on the ground.

He breaks through me with breach after breach;

He runs at me like a warrior.

I have sewed sackcloth over my skin

And thrust my horn in the dust.

My face is flushed from weeping,

And the shadow of death is on my eyelids,

Why?—because 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 cry.

Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven,

And my advocate is on high.

My friends are my scoffers;

My eye weeps to God.

O that a man might argue with God

As a man with his neighbor!

For when a few years are past,

I shall go the way of no return.

Job Seeks Hope

“My spirit is broken; my days are extinguished;

The grave is ready for me.

Surely mockers are with me,

And my eye gazes on their provocation.

“Establish, now, a pledge for me with Yourself;

Who is there that will clap my hand in pledge?

For You have hidden their heart from insight,

Therefore You will not exalt them.

He who informs against friends for a share of the spoil,

The eyes of his children also will come to an end.

“But He has made me a byword of the people,

And I am one at whom men spit.

My eye has also grown dim because of grief,

And all my members are as a shadow.

The upright will be appalled at this,

And the innocent will stir up himself against the godless.

Nevertheless the righteous will hold to his way,

And he who has clean hands will grow mightier and mightier.

But come again all of you now,

For I do not find a wise man among you.

My days are past; my plans are torn apart,

Even the wishes of my heart.

They make night into day, saying,

‘The light is near,’ in the presence of darkness.

If I hope for Sheol as my home,

I make my bed in the darkness;

If I call to the pit, ‘You are my father’;

To the worm, ‘my mother and my sister’;

Where now is my hope?

And who beholds my hope?

Will it go down with me to Sheol?

Shall we together go down into the dust?”