5.
Job's rejection of his friends' words
16:1-6
Job 16
:1
16:1
Then Job answered and said,
Job 16
:2
16:2
I have heard many such things;
Troubling
acomforters are you all.
Job 16
:3
16:3
Do words of wind have an end?
Or what has provoked you that you
so respond?
Job 16
:4
16:4
I also could speak like you,
If your soul were in my soul’s stead;
I could join
my words together against you
And shake my head at you.
Job 16
:5
16:5
I could strengthen you with my mouth,
And the movement of my lips would mitigate
your pain.
Job 16
:6
16:6
If I speak, my pain is not mitigated;
And if I forbear, how much departs from me?
6.
Job's desire that God would plead for him
16:7—17:16
Job 16
:7
16:7
But now He has worn me out;
You have desolated all my company.
Job 16
:8
16:8
And You have seized me; it is a testimony
against me;
And my leanness rises up against me; it testifies to my face.
Job 16
:9
16:9
In His wrath He has torn
me to pieces and been adverse toward me;
He has
agnashed His teeth at me.
My
bAdversary sharpens His eyes at me.
Job 16
:10
16:10
With their mouth they gape at me;
They strike my cheek reproachfully;
They mass themselves together against me.
Job 16
:11
16:11
God has delivered me over to the unjust
And cast me down into the hands of the wicked.
Job 16
:12
16:12
I was at ease, and He broke me apart;
Indeed He took me by my neck and dashed me to pieces.
And He set me up as His
atarget;
Job 16
:13
16:13
His archers surrounded me;
He split open my kidneys and did not desist;
He poured out my gall upon the earth.
Job 16
:14
16:14
He broke me open with breach upon breach;
He ran at me like a mighty man
of war.
Job 16
:15
16:15
I have sewn sackcloth upon my skin
And have cast my horn into the dust.
Job 16
:16
16:16
My face is reddened with weeping,
And on my eyelids is the shadow of death;
Job 16
:17
16:17
Though there is no violence in my hands,
And my prayer is pure.
Job 16
:18
16:18
O earth, do not cover my
ablood;
And let there be no
resting place for my crying out.
Job 16
:19
16:19
Even now, there in heaven is my
aWitness,
And He who vouches for me is in the heights.
Job 16
:20
16:20
My friends deride me;
My eye pours out tears to God,
Job 16
:21
16:21
That He would plead for a man
in his case with God
And for a son of man
in his case with his neighbor.
Job 16
:22
16:22
For when years
few in number have come,
I will go the way from which I cannot return.
