Job 16 — The Holy Bible

Job's Friends Are Bad Comforters

Job 16, verse 1. Then Job answered and said:

“I have heard many such things;

You are all bad comforters.

What order is there in words of wind?

Or what troubles you, that you answer thus?

I also could speak as you do,

If indeed your soul were in my soul's place.

Then I would attack you with words

And shake my head at you.

But would there were strength in my mouth:

Then I would not spare the movement of my lips.

The Lord Has Rejected Me

“If I should speak, I would feel the pain of my wound,

But if I also should be silent, how would I be less wounded?

But now He has made me weary and a worn-out fool,

And you have laid hold of me.

My falsehood has become a testimony.

It rises up and argues against me to my face.

He vented His wrath and struck me down;

He gnashed at me with His teeth;

The arrows of the raiders fell on me.

He attacked me with the sharp darts of His eyes;

He struck me on the cheek;

With one accord they ran me down.

For the Lord delivered me into the hands of an unjust man

And cast me upon the ungodly.

When I was at peace, He rejected me.

He took me by the hair of my head and pulled it out.

He set me up as a mark.

They surrounded me with spears aimed at my mind.

Without sparing me, they poured out my gall on the ground.

Running at me with all their strength,

They knocked me down, head over heels.

I sewed sackcloth on my skin,

And my strength is spent on the ground.

My belly is on fire because of weeping,

And shade is on my eyelids.

Yet there was no wrongdoing in my hands,

And my prayer is pure.

O earth, do not cover the blood of my flesh,

Nor may my cry have a place.

Now behold, my witness is in the heavens,

And the One who knows me thoroughly is on high.

May my supplication come before the Lord,

And may my eyes pour out tears in His presence.

May there be rebuttal for a man before the Lord,

As a son of man with his neighbor.

For my years are numbered,

And I shall go the way of no return.