📖 Job 19
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Job’s Reply to Bildad Then Job answered:
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“How long will you torment me and crush me with your words?
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These ten times you have been reproaching me; you are not ashamed to attack me!
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But even if it were true that I have erred, my error remains solely my concern!
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If indeed you would exalt yourselves above me and plead my disgrace against me,
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know then that God has wronged me and encircled me with his net.
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Job’s Abandonment and Affliction“If I cry out,‘Violence!’ I receive no answer; I cry for help, but there is no justice.
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He has blocked my way so I cannot pass, and has set darkness over my paths.
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He has stripped me of my honor and has taken the crown off my head.
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He tears me down on every side until I perish; he uproots my hope like an uprooted tree.
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Thus his anger burns against me, and he considers me among his enemies.
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His troops advance together; they throw up a siege ramp against me, and they camp around my tent.
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Job’s Forsaken State“He has put my relatives far from me; my acquaintances only turn away from me.
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My kinsmen have failed me; my friends have forgotten me.
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My guests and my servant girls consider me a stranger; I am a foreigner in their eyes.
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I summon my servant, but he does not respond, even though I implore him with my own mouth.
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My breath is repulsive to my wife; I am loathsome to my brothers.
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Even youngsters have scorned me; when I get up, they scoff at me.
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All my closest friends detest me; and those whom I love have turned against me.
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My bones stick to my skin and my flesh; I have escaped alive with only the skin of my teeth.
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Have pity on me, my friends, have pity on me, for the hand of God has struck me.
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Why do you pursue me like God does? Will you never be satiated with my flesh?
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Job’s Assurance of Vindication“O that my words were written down, O that they were written on a scroll,
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that with an iron chisel and with lead they were engraved in a rock forever!
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As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and that as the last he will stand upon the earth.
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And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God,
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whom I will see for myself, and whom my own eyes will behold, and not another. My heart grows faint within me.
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If you say,‘How we will pursue him, since the root of the trouble is found in him!’
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Fear the sword yourselves, for wrath brings the punishment by the sword, so that you may know that there is judgment.”