Job trusts in his redeemer
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“How long will you torment me, and crush me with words?
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You have reproached me ten times. You aren’t ashamed that you attack me.
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If it is true that I have erred, my error remains with myself.
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If indeed you will magnify yourselves against me, and plead against me my reproach,
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know now that God has subverted me, and has surrounded me with his net.
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“Behold, I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard. I cry for help, but there is no justice.
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He has walled up my way so that I can’t pass, and has set darkness in my paths.
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He has stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head.
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He has broken me down on every side, and I am gone. He has plucked my hope up like a tree.
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He has also kindled his wrath against me. He counts me among his adversaries.
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His troops come on together, build a siege ramp against me, and encamp around my tent.
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“He has put my brothers far from me. My acquaintances are wholly estranged from me.
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My relatives have gone away. My familiar friends have forgotten me.
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Those who dwell in my house and my maids consider me a stranger. I am an alien in their sight.
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I call to my servant, and he gives me no answer. I beg him with my mouth.
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My breath is offensive to my wife. I am loathsome to the children of my own mother.
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Even young children despise me. If I arise, they speak against me.
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All my familiar friends abhor me. They whom I loved have turned against me.
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My bones stick to my skin and to my flesh. I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.
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“Have pity on me. Have pity on me, you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me.
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Why do you persecute me as God, and are not satisfied with my flesh?
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“Oh that my words were now written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book!
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That with an iron pen and lead they were engraved in the rock forever!
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But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives. In the end, he will stand upon the earth.
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After my skin is destroyed, then I will see God in my flesh,
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whom I, even I, will see on my side. My eyes will see, and not as a stranger. “My heart is consumed within me.
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If you say, ‘How we will persecute him!’ because the root of the matter is found in me,
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be afraid of the sword, for wrath brings the punishments of the sword, that you may know there is a judgment.”