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16:1  Job’s reply:
16:2  “I have heard all this before. What miserable comforters all of you are.
16:3  Won’t you ever stop your flow of foolish words? What have I said that makes you speak so endlessly?
16:4  But perhaps I’d sermonize the same as you—if you were I and I were you. I would spout off my criticisms against you and shake my head at you.
16:5  But no! I would speak in such a way that it would help you. I would try to take away your grief.
16:6  “But now my grief remains no matter how I defend myself; nor does it help if I refuse to speak.
16:7  For God has ground me down and taken away my family.
16:8  O God, you have turned me to skin and bones—as a proof, they say, of my sins.
16:9  God hates me and angrily tears at my flesh; he has gnashed upon me with his teeth and watched to snuff out any sign of life.
16:10  These ‘comforters’ have gaping jaws to swallow me; they slap my cheek. My enemies gather themselves against me.
16:11  And God has delivered me over to sinners, into the hands of the wicked.
16:12  “I was living quietly until he broke me apart. He has taken me by the neck and dashed me to pieces, then hung me up as his target.
16:13  His archers surround me, letting fly their arrows, so that the ground is wet from my blood.
16:14  Again and again he attacks me, running upon me like a giant.
16:15  Here I sit in sackcloth; and have laid all hope in the dust.
16:16  My eyes are red with weeping, and on my eyelids is the shadow of death.
16:17  “Yet I am innocent, and my prayer is pure.
16:18  O Earth, do not conceal my blood. Let it protest on my behalf.
16:19  “Yet even now the witness to my innocence is there in heaven; my advocate is there on high.
16:20  My friends scoff at me, but I pour out my tears to God,
16:21  pleading that he will listen as a man would listen to his neighbor.
16:22  For all too soon I must go down that road from which I shall never return.