Job

¹ Then Job defended himself:

² What a bunch of miserable comforters!

³ What's your problem that you go on and on like this?

⁴ I could talk just like you. I could put together a terrific harangue and really let you have it.

⁵ make things better, not worse!

⁶ if I say nothing, that doesn't help either.

⁷ God, you have wasted me totally—me and my family!

⁸ showing the world that you're against me. My gaunt face stares back at me from the mirror, a mute witness to your treatment of me.

⁹ your teeth rip me to shreds, your eyes burn holes in me—God, my enemy!

¹⁰ Contemptuous, they slap me around and gang up against me.

¹¹ lets wicked people do what they want with me.

¹² He grabbed me by the neck and threw me around. He set me up as his target,

¹³ Merciless, they shot me full of arrows; bitter bile poured from my gut to the ground.

¹⁴ charging me like a mad bull.

¹⁵ I lay face down in the dirt.

¹⁶ look at the dark shadows under my eyes,

¹⁷ and my prayers are sincere!

¹⁸ Don't muffle my cry!

¹⁹ in highest heaven, some Attorney who can clear my name—

²⁰ while I'm weeping my eyes out before God.

²¹ as a neighbor stands up for a neighbor.

²² before I set out on the road of no return.