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19:1  Job answered his friends in frustration.
19:2  Job: O how long! How long will you torture me and pound me with your chatter?
19:3  What is it now? Eight times? Nine times? No, surely it’s ten times you have insulted me. Ten times you’ve shamelessly acted to harm me.
19:4  Even if I have erred, my faults lie with me alone.
19:5  However, if you must exalt yourselves at my expense, if you must proffer my own disgrace as evidence against me,
19:6  Then you ought at least to know that I have been wronged by God. Yes, His net is closed about me.
19:7  Look! I cry out, “Violence!” but no response comes. I shout for help, but justice eludes me.
19:8  He is a roadblock. He will not let me pass; He has covered my roads in darkness.
19:9  He has stripped me of my honor, torn the crown off my head.
19:10  He comes at me from all sides, but I attempt to leave; He rips out my hope as if it were a tree in dry ground.
19:11  His anger burns white-hot against me, and He considers me His enemy.
19:12  His militia arrives to raise a siege ramp against me and to surround my dwelling.
19:13  He has driven my relatives far from me; I am cut off from my friends.
19:14  My entire family has failed me; my best friends have forgotten me.
19:15  Everyone in my house, including my maidservants, treats me like an outsider; I am a stranger to them now.
19:16  When I send for my servant, he does not come. I even plead with him with my own voice.
19:17  My breath is strange; even my wife avoids me; I’m loathsome to my relatives; they can’t stand to be around me.
19:18  Even young children taunt me, and when I seek to rise, they mock me.
19:19  My closest friends can no longer bear me, and anyone I have ever loved has turned against me.
19:20  I am reduced to skin and bones; I have barely escaped by the skin of my teeth.
19:21  Show me your pity, my friends, show me your pity! For truly, I have been struck by the hand of God.
19:22  Why do you pursue me as God has done? Is my emaciated body not satisfying enough for you?
19:23  What I would give to have my words taken down, to have them inscribed for posterity on a scroll.
19:24  No! More than that! To have them chiseled with iron filled with lead— carved in stone for all eternity.
19:25  Besides, I know my Redeemer lives, and in the end He will rise and take His stand on the earth.
19:26  And though my skin has been stripped off, still, in my flesh, I will see God.
19:27  I, myself, will see Him: not some stranger, but actually me, with these eyes. Toward this end, my deepest longings pine away within my chest.
19:28  Job: If you ask, “How will we pursue him since the root cause of his suffering lies in him?”
19:29  You ought to fear the sword yourselves; for the sword bears fury’s punishment in order that you might realize there is, in fact, a judgment.