1 And lyoḇ answered and said,
2 “I have heard many like these; all of you are comforters of trouble!
3 Is there an end to words of wind? Or what provokes you that you answer?
4 I might also speak like you, if you were in my place. I might heap up words against you, and shake my head at you.
5 I might strengthen you with my mouth, and my moving lips might bring relief.
6 If I speak, my pain is not relieved; and if I refrain, does it leave me?
7 But now He has wearied me. You have stunned all my company.
8 And You have plucked me, and it is a witness. And my failure rises up against me, it bears witness to my face.
9 He has torn in His wrath, and He hates me. He has gnashed at me with His teeth; my adversary sharpens His eyes upon me.
10 They open wide their mouths at me, in scorn they have smitten my cheeks, they mass themselves together against me.
11 Ĕl has handed me over to the perverse, and cast me into the hands of the wicked.
12 I was at ease, but He broke me. And He took me by my neck and shattered me, and He has stood me up for His target.
13 His archers surround me, He splits my kidneys in two and does not spare, He pours out my bile on the ground.
14 He made a breach in me, breach upon breach. He runs upon me like a mighty man.
15 I sewed sackcloth over my skin, and laid my horn in the dust.
16 My face is reddened from weeping, and on my eyelids is the shadow of death;
17 though no violence was on my hand, and my prayer sincere.
18 O earth, do not cover my blood, and let my cry have no resting place!
19 See, even now my witness is in the shamayim, and my defender is on high.
20 My friends are they that scorn me; my eyes pour out tears to Eloah.
21 O that one might plead for a man with Eloah, as a man with his neighbour!
22 When a few years are past, then I shall go the way of no return.