Job reproaches his merciless friends
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Job replied to Eliphaz and the others,
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“I have heard things like that before; all of you, instead of helping me, are only causing me to feel more miserable.
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Will your speeches, which are only wind, never end? Eliphaz, what bothers you that makes you continue replying like this to me?
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If it were you three and not I who were suffering, I could, in your place, say the things that you are saying. I could make great speeches to criticize you, and I could shake my head at you to ridicule you.
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Then you would see whether my words encouraged you or not; you would see whether they made you feel your pain less.
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But now, if I talk, my pain does not decrease, and if I am silent, my pain still certainly does not go away.
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God, you have now taken away all my strength; you have destroyed all my family.
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You have shriveled me up, and people think that shows me to be a sinner. They see that I am only skin and bones, and they think that proves that I am guilty.
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Because God is very angry with me and hates me, it is as though he were a wild animal that tore me apart with his teeth because he was my enemy.
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People gape at me with their mouths open to sneer at me; they have struck me on the face to ridicule me, and they crowd around me to threaten me.
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It is as though God has handed me over to people who refuse to honor him and has put me into the power of the wicked.
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Previously, I was living peacefully, but he crushed me; it is as though he grabbed my neck and smashed me to pieces; it is as though he set me up like a target.
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It is as though I were a target, and that people were surrounding me and shooting arrows at me. God’s arrows pierce my kidneys and cause the bile from my liver to spill onto the ground; God does not pity me at all.
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It is as though I were a wall that he is breaking through time after time; he rushes at me like a soldier who is attacking his enemy.
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Because I am mourning, I wear pieces of rough cloth that I have sewed together, and I sit here in the dirt, very depressed.
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My face is red because I have cried very much, and there are dark circles around my eyes.
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All this has happened to me even though I have not acted violently toward anyone, and even though I always pray sincerely to God.
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When I die, I want the ground to act as though I had been murdered; I want it to cry out against those who killed me, and I do not want anyone to stop me while I am demanding that God act justly toward me.
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But even now, I know that there is someone in heaven who will testify for me, and he will say that what I have done is right.
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My three friends scorn me, but my eyes are full of tears while I cry out to God.
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I pray that the one who knows what I have done would come to plead with God for me as a person pleads for his friend.
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I say this because within a few years I will die; I will walk along the road to a place from which I will never return.”
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