Job 16

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¹Forsooth Job answered, and said,

²I have oft heard such things; all ye be heavy comforters.

³Whether words full of wind shall have an end? either anything is dis-easeful to thee, if thou speakest?

⁴Also I might speak things like to you, and I would, that your soul were for my soul; and I would comfort you by words, and I would move mine head on you;

⁵I would make you strong by my mouth, and I would move my lips as sparing you.

⁶But what shall I do? If I speak, my sorrow resteth not; and if I am still, it goeth not away from me.

⁷But now my sorrow hath oppressed me, and all my limbs be driven into nought.

⁸My rivellings say witnessing against me, and a false speaker is raised up against my face, and against-saith me.

⁹He gathered together his strong vengeance in me, and he menaced or threatened me, and he gnashed against me with his teeth; mine enemy hath beheld me with fearedful eyes.

¹⁰They opened their mouths upon me, and they said shame to me, and they smote my cheek; and they be filled with my pains.

¹¹God hath enclosed me altogether at or with the wicked, and hath given me into the hands of wicked men.

¹²I, that rich man and famous sometime, am all-broken suddenly; he held my noll; he hath broken me, and hath set or put me as into a sign.

¹³And he hath encompassed me with his spears, he hath wounded altogether my loins; he hath not spared me, and he hath shed out mine entrails into the earth.

¹⁴He hath beaten me with wound upon wound; and he as a giant hath fallen in upon me.

¹⁵I sewed together a sackcloth upon my skin; and I covered my flesh with ashes.

¹⁶My face swelled of weeping, and mine eyelids waxed dark.

¹⁷I suffered these things without wickedness of mine hand, or work, when I had clean prayers to God.

¹⁸Earth, cover thou not my blood, and my cry find not in thee a place of hiding.

¹⁹For, lo! my witness is in heaven; and the Knower of my conscience is in high places.

²⁰O! my friends, full of words; mine eye droppeth out tears to God.

²¹And I would, that a man were deemed so with God, as the son of man is deemed with his fellow.

²²For lo! short years pass, and I go a path, by which I shall not turn again.