Chapter Sixteen: Job Reaffirms his Innocence.

Then Job answered: "I have heard many such things; miserable comforters you all are. Have windy problems no limit? Or what provokes you that you keep on talking? I could also talk as you do, if you were in my place; I could join words together against you, and shake my head at you. I could encourage you with my mouth, and the solace of my lips would assuage your pain. If I speak, my pain is not assuaged, and if I forebear, how much of it leaves me? Surely now God has worn me out; he has made me desolate in all my company. And he has shriveled me up, which is a witness against me, and it testifies to my face. He has torn me in his wrath, and hated me, and it testifies to my face. He has torn me in his wrath, and hated me, he has gnashed his teeth at me; my adversary sharpens his eyes against me. They have gaped at me with their mouths; they have struck me insolently on the check; they mass themselves together against me. God gives me up to the ungodly, and casts me into the hands of the wicked. I was at ease, and he broke me in two; he seized me to the neck and he dashed me to piece; he set me up as his target; his archers surround me. He slashes open my kidneys, and shows no mercy; he pours out my gall on the ground. He bursts upon me again and again; he rushes at me like a warrior. I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin, and have laid my strength in the dust. My face is red with weeping, and deep darkness is on my eyelids, though there is no violence in my hands and my prayer is pure. O, Earth do not cover my blood; let my outcry find no resting place. Even now, in fact, my witness is in heaven, and he that vouches for me is on high. My friends scorn me; my eye pours out tears to God, that he would maintain the right of a mortal with God, as one does for a neighbor. For when a few years have come, I shall go the way from which I shall not return.