Job 16
Job: My Witness Is in Heaven
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Job’s Second Answer to Eliphaz
16:1Then Job replied:
16:2“I have heard many such things;
you are all comforters of evils.
16:3What then? Is there any order in words of wind?
What will trouble you, that you answer?
16:4I too will speak as you do, if your life were put in place of mine.
Then I will leap upon you with words
and shake my head against you.
16:5May there be strength in my mouth;
I will not spare the movement of my lips.
16:6For if I speak, I will not feel pain from the wound;
and if I remain silent, how will I be wounded any less?
16:7But now He has made me exhausted, foolish, and decayed,
16:8and You seized me; it became a testimony.
My falsehood rose up within me
and answered against my face.
16:9Dealing in anger, He cast me down
and gnashed His teeth at me;
the arrows of His raiders fell upon me.
16:10He sprang upon me with points of eyes;
He struck my jaw with a sharp point,
and together they rushed down upon me.
16:11For the Lord handed me into an unjust person’s hands
and cast me upon the ungodly.
16:12While I was at peace, He scattered me;
He took me by the hair and tore me apart,
and set me up like a target.
16:13They surrounded me with spears,
striking my kidneys without sparing;
they poured my gall onto the earth.
16:14They cast me down, fall upon fall;
in their strength they ran against me.
16:15I sewed sackcloth upon my hide,
and my strength was extinguished in earth.
16:16My belly is burned up from weeping,
and a shadow lies upon my eyelids.
16:17Yet there was nothing unjust in my hands,
and my prayer is pure.
16:18Earth, do not cover the blood of my flesh,
and let there be no place for my cry!
16:19Even now, look, my witness is in the heavens,
and the one who knows with me is in the highest places.
16:20May my supplication reach the Lord,
and may my eye drip tears before Him.
16:21May there be a hearing for a man before the Lord,
and may a son of man plead for his neighbor.
16:22The numbered years have come,
and I will travel a way on which I will not return.
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Saints Translation · Liturgical reading edition · V1 · working draft awaiting specialist review.