Job trusts in his redeemer
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“How long will you three torment me and discourage me by calling me wicked?
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You have insulted me many times; are you not ashamed for saying these things to me?
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Even if it were true that I had done wrong, I have not injured you!
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If you truly think that you are better than I am, and if you argue that I must be guilty because I am suffering,
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you should realize that it is God who has caused me to suffer. It is as though he has a net and that he has caught me in it.
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I cry out, ‘People are murdering me!’, but no one answers me. I call out loudly, but there is no one, not even God, who acts fairly toward me.
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It is as though God has blocked my road, and I cannot go anywhere; it is as though he has forced me to try to find the road in the darkness.
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He has taken away my good reputation; it is as though he has removed a crown from my head.
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He batters me from every side, and I will soon die. I no longer expect him to do anything good for me.
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He attacks me because he is very angry at me; he considers me to be his enemy.
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It is as though he were sending his army to attack me; they surround my tent and get ready to attack me.
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God has caused my brothers to abandon me, and for all those who know me to act like strangers to me.
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All my relatives and good friends have left me.
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The people who were guests in my house have forgotten me, and my female servants consider that I am a foreigner whom they do not know.
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When I summon my servants, they do not answer; When I plead with them to come to help me, they do not come.
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My breath smells very bad to my wife so she stays away from me, and my brothers detest me.
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Even young children despise me; when I stand up to talk to them, they laugh at me.
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My dearest friends detest me, and those whom I love very much have turned against me.
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My body is only skin and bones; I am barely alive.
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I plead with you, my three friends, pity me because God has struck me very hard.
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Why do you cause me to suffer, also? Do you think you are God? Why do you never get enough of accusing me of doing wrong?
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I wish that someone would take these words of mine and write them permanently in a book in order that people can read them.
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Or else, I wish that someone would carve my words on a rock with a chisel in order that they would last forever.
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But I know that the one who vindicates me in court is alive, and that some day he will stand here on the earth and make the final decision about whether I deserve to be punished.
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And even after diseases have destroyed my body, still, in my body I will see God.
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I will see him myself; I will see him with my own eyes! My emotions overwhelm me as I think about that!
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If you three men say, ‘This is how we will cause him to suffer!’ and you say, ‘He is the one who has caused his own troubles,’
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you should fear that God will punish you; he punishes those like you with whom he is angry; and when that happens, you will know that there is someone who judges people.”
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