1Job answered:
2"How long are you going to keep battering away at me, pounding me with these harangues?
3Time after time after time you jump all over me. Do you have no conscience, abusing me like this?
4Even if I have, somehow or other, gotten off the track, what business is that of yours?
5Why do you insist on putting me down, using my troubles as a stick to beat me?
6Tell it to God—he's the one behind all this, he's the one who dragged me into this mess.
7"Look at me—I shout 'Murder!' and I'm ignored; I call for help and no one bothers to stop.
8God threw a barricade across my path—I'm stymied; he turned out all the lights—I'm stuck in the dark.
9He destroyed my reputation, robbed me of all self-respect.
10He tore me apart piece by piece—I'm ruined! Then he yanked out hope by the roots.
11He's angry with me—oh, how he's angry! He treats me like his worst enemy.
12He has launched a major campaign against me, using every weapon he can think of, coming at me from all sides at once.
13"God alienated my family from me;
14everyone who knows me avoids me. My relatives and friends have all left; houseguests forget I ever existed.
15The servant girls treat me like a bum off the street, look at me like they've never seen me before.
16I call my attendant and he ignores me, ignores me even though I plead with him.
17My wife can't stand to be around me anymore. I'm repulsive to my family.
18Even street urchins despise me; when I come out, they taunt and jeer.
19Everyone I've ever been close to abhors me; my dearest loved ones reject me.
20I'm nothing but a bag of bones; my life hangs by a thread.
21"Oh, friends, dear friends, take pity on me. God has come down hard on me!
22Do you have to be hard on me too? Don't you ever tire of abusing me?
23"If only my words were written in a book—
24better yet, chiseled in stone!
25Still, I know that God lives—the One who gives me back my life— and eventually he'll take his stand on earth.
26And I'll see him—even though I get skinned alive!—
27see God myself, with my very own eyes. Oh, how I long for that day!
28"If you're thinking, 'How can we get through to him, get him to see that his trouble is all his own fault?'
29Forget it. Start worrying about yourselves. Worry about your own sins and God's coming judgment, for judgment is most certainly on the way."