Chapter 19

Job: My Redeemer Lives

¹Then Job answered:

²“How long will you torment me

and crush me with your words?

³Ten times now you have reproached me;

you shamelessly mistreat me.

⁴Even if I have truly gone astray,

my error concerns me alone.

⁵If indeed you would exalt yourselves above me

and use my disgrace against me,

⁶then understand that it is God who has wronged me

and drawn His net around me.

⁷Though I cry out, ‘Violence!’ I get no response;

though I call for help, there is no justice.

⁸He has blocked my way so I cannot pass;

He has veiled my paths with darkness.

⁹He has stripped me of my honor

and removed the crown from my head.

¹⁰He tears me down on every side until I am gone;

He uproots my hope like a tree.

¹¹His anger burns against me,

and He counts me among His enemies.

¹²His troops advance together;

they construct a ramp against me

and encamp around my tent.

¹³He has removed my brothers from me;

my acquaintances have abandoned me.

¹⁴My kinsmen have failed me,

and my friends have forgotten me.

¹⁵My guests and maidservants count me as a stranger;

I am a foreigner in their sight.

¹⁶I call for my servant, but he does not answer,

though I implore him with my own mouth.

¹⁷My breath is repulsive to my wife,

and I am loathsome to my own family.

¹⁸Even little boys scorn me;

when I appear, they deride me.

¹⁹All my best friends despise me,

and those I love have turned against me.

²⁰My skin and flesh cling to my bones;

I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.

²¹Have pity on me, my friends, have pity,

for the hand of God has struck me.

²²Why do you persecute me as God does?

Will you never get enough of my flesh?

²³I wish that my words were recorded

and inscribed in a book,

²⁴by an iron stylus on lead,

or chiseled in stone forever.

²⁵But I know that my Redeemer^a lives,

and in the end He will stand upon the earth.^b

²⁶Even after my skin has been destroyed,

yet in my flesh^c I will see God.

²⁷I will see Him for myself;

my eyes will behold Him, and not as a stranger.

How my heart yearns^d within me!

²⁸If you say, ‘Let us persecute him,

since the root of the matter lies with him,^e’

²⁹then you should fear the sword yourselves,

because wrath brings punishment by the sword,

so that you may know there is a judgment.”