Job’s Sixth Speech: A Response to Bildad

1Then Job spoke again:

2“How long will you torture me?

How long will you try to crush me with your words?

3You have already insulted me ten times.

You should be ashamed of treating me so badly.

4Even if I have sinned,

that is my concern, not yours.

5You think you’re better than I am,

using my humiliation as evidence of my sin.

6But it is God who has wronged me,

capturing me in his net.a

7“I cry out, ‘Help!’ but no one answers me.

I protest, but there is no justice.

8God has blocked my way so I cannot move.

He has plunged my path into darkness.

9He has stripped me of my honor

and removed the crown from my head.

10He has demolished me on every side, and I am finished.

He has uprooted my hope like a fallen tree.

11His fury burns against me;

he counts me as an enemy.

12His troops advance.

They build up roads to attack me.

They camp all around my tent.

13“My relatives stay far away,

and my friends have turned against me.

14My family is gone,

and my close friends have forgotten me.

15My servants and maids consider me a stranger.

I am like a foreigner to them.

16When I call my servant, he doesn’t come;

I have to plead with him!

17My breath is repulsive to my wife.

I am rejected by my own family.

18Even young children despise me.

When I stand to speak, they turn their backs on me.

19My close friends detest me.

Those I loved have turned against me.

20I have been reduced to skin and bones

and have escaped death by the skin of my teeth.

21“Have mercy on me, my friends, have mercy,

for the hand of God has struck me.

22Must you also persecute me, like God does?

Haven’t you chewed me up enough?

23“Oh, that my words could be recorded.

Oh, that they could be inscribed on a monument,

24carved with an iron chisel and filled with lead,

engraved forever in the rock.

25“But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives,

and he will stand upon the earth at last.

26And after my body has decayed,

yet in my body I will see God!b

27I will see him for myself.

Yes, I will see him with my own eyes.

I am overwhelmed at the thought!

28“How dare you go on persecuting me,

saying, ‘It’s his own fault’?

29You should fear punishment yourselves,

for your attitude deserves punishment.

Then you will know that there is indeed a judgment.”