# Job 19 
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1. Then Job answered and said: 
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2. “How long will you torment me and break me in pieces with words? 
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3. These ten times you have cast reproach upon me; are you not ashamed to wrong me? 
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4. And even if it be true that I have erred, my error remains with myself. 
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5. If indeed you magnify yourselves against me and make my disgrace an argument against me, 
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6. know then that God has put me in the wrong and closed his net about me. 
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7. Behold, I cry out, ‘Violence!’ but I am not answered; I call for help, but there is no justice. 
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8. He has walled up my way, so that I cannot pass, and he has set darkness upon my paths. 
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9. He has stripped from me my glory and taken the crown from my head. 
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10. He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone, and my hope has he pulled up like a tree. 
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11. He has kindled his wrath against me and counts me as his adversary. 
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12. His troops come on together; they have cast up their siege ramp against me and encamp around my tent. 
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13. “He has put my brothers far from me, and those who knew me are wholly estranged from me. 
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14. My relatives have failed me, my close friends have forgotten me. 
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15. The guests in my house and my maidservants count me as a stranger; I have become a foreigner in their eyes. 
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16. I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer; I must plead with him with my mouth for mercy. 
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17. My breath is strange to my wife, and I am a stench to the children of my own mother. 
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18. Even young children despise me; when I rise they talk against me. 
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19. All my intimate friends abhor me, and those whom I loved have turned against me. 
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20. My bones stick to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth. 
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21. Have mercy on me, have mercy on me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me! 
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22. Why do you, like God, pursue me? Why are you not satisfied with my flesh? 
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23. “Oh that my words were written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book! 
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24. Oh that with an iron pen and lead they were engraved in the rock forever! 
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25. For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. 
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26. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, 
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27. whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me! 
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28. If you say, ‘How we will pursue him!’ and, ‘The root of the matter is found in him,’ 
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29. be afraid of the sword, for wrath brings the punishment of the sword, that you may know there is a judgment.” 

(ESV)