# Job 16 
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1. Then Job answered and said: 
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2. “I have heard many such things; miserable comforters are you all. 
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3. Shall windy words have an end? Or what provokes you that you answer? 
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4. I also could speak as you do, if you were in my place; I could join words together against you and shake my head at you. 
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5. I could strengthen you with my mouth, and the solace of my lips would assuage your pain. 
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6. “If I speak, my pain is not assuaged, and if I forbear, how much of it leaves me? 
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7. Surely now God has worn me out; he has made desolate all my company. 
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8. And he has shriveled me up, which is a witness against me, and my leanness has risen up against me; it testifies to my face. 
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9. He has torn me in his wrath and hated me; he has gnashed his teeth at me; my adversary sharpens his eyes against me. 
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10. Men have gaped at me with their mouth; they have struck me insolently on the cheek; they mass themselves together against me. 
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11. God gives me up to the ungodly and casts me into the hands of the wicked. 
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12. I was at ease, and he broke me apart; he seized me by the neck and dashed me to pieces; he set me up as his target; 
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13. his archers surround me. He slashes open my kidneys and does not spare; he pours out my gall on the ground. 
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14. He breaks me with breach upon breach; he runs upon me like a warrior. 
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15. I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin and have laid my strength in the dust. 
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16. My face is red with weeping, and on my eyelids is deep darkness, 
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17. although there is no violence in my hands, and my prayer is pure. 
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18. “O earth, cover not my blood, and let my cry find no resting place. 
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19. Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven, and he who testifies for me is on high. 
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20. My friends scorn me; my eye pours out tears to God, 
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21. that he would argue the case of a man with God, as a son of man does with his neighbor. 
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22. For when a few years have come I shall go the way from which I shall not return. 

(ESV)