Job Decries His Comforters

Job says he has heard many speeches like this and calls the friends miserable comforters whose windy words never end. He adds that if their positions were reversed he could pile up words too, but he would choose instead to strengthen them with his mouth and ease their grief.

T¹hen Job answered: ²“I have heard many things like these; ³Is there no end to your long-winded speeches? ⁴I could also speak like you ⁵But I would encourage you with my mouth,

Job says that whether he speaks or stays silent, his pain does not lift. He describes himself as exhausted, gaunt, opposed by God's anger, mocked and struck by others, handed over to the ungodly, and shattered from former ease into the condition of a target under repeated assault.

⁶Even if I speak, my pain is not relieved, ⁷Surely He has now exhausted me; ⁸You have bound me, and it has become a witness; ⁹His anger has torn me and opposed me; ¹⁰They open their mouths against me ¹¹God has delivered me to unjust men; ¹²I was at ease, but He shattered me; ¹³His archers surround me. ¹⁴He breaks me with wound upon wound;

Job says he has sewn sackcloth onto his skin and pressed his strength into the dust, his face red from weeping and deep shadow over his eyes. Yet he maintains that his hands are free from violence and his prayer is pure.

¹⁵I have sewn sackcloth over my skin; ¹⁶My face is red with weeping, ¹⁷yet my hands are free of violence

Job calls on the earth not to hide his blood and says that even now his witness is in heaven. Though his friends scorn him, his tears turn toward God, and he longs for someone who could plead for a man with God as one pleads for a friend before the few years left to him are gone.

¹⁸O earth, do not cover my blood; ¹⁹Even now my witness is in heaven, ²⁰My friends are my scoffers ²¹Oh, that a man might plead with God ²²For when only a few years are past