² “How long will you torment me
    and break me in pieces with words?
³ These ten times you have cast reproach upon me;
    are you not ashamed to wrong me?
⁴ And even if it is true that I have erred,
    my error remains with me.^(A)
5 If indeed you magnify yourselves against me
    and make my humiliation an argument against me,^(B)
6 know then that God has put me in the wrong
    and closed his net around me.^(C)
7 Even when I cry out, ‘Violence!’ I am not answered;
    I call aloud, but there is no justice.^(D)
8 He has walled up my way so that I cannot pass,
    and he has set darkness upon my paths.^(E)
9 He has stripped my glory from me
    and taken the crown from my head.^(F)
10 He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone;
    he has uprooted my hope like a tree.^(G)
11 He has kindled his wrath against me
    and counts me as his adversary.^(H)
12 His troops come on together;
    they have thrown up siegeworks^[a] against me
    and encamp around my tent.^(I)

¹³ “He has put my family far from me,
    and my acquaintances are wholly estranged from me.
¹⁴ My relatives and my close friends have failed me;
¹⁵     the guests in my house have forgotten me;
my female servants count me as a stranger;
    I have become an alien in their eyes.^(J)
16 I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer;
    I must myself plead with him.
¹⁷ My breath is repulsive to my wife;
    I am loathsome to my own family.
¹⁸ Even young children despise me;
    when I rise, they talk against me.^(K)
19 All my intimate friends abhor me,
    and those whom I love have turned against me.^(L)
20 My bones cling to my skin and to my flesh,
    and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.^(M)
21 Have pity on me, have pity on me, O you my friends,
    for the hand of God has touched me!^(N)
22 Why do you, like God, pursue me,
    never satisfied with my flesh?^(O)

²³ “O that my words were written down!
    O that they were inscribed in a book!^(P)
24 O that with an iron pen and with lead
    they were engraved on a rock forever!^(Q)
25 For I know that my vindicator^[b] lives
    and that in the end he will stand upon the earth;^(R)
26 and after my skin has been destroyed,
    then in my flesh I shall see God,^(S)
27 whom I shall see on my side,
    and my eyes shall behold, and not another.
    My heart faints within me!^(T)
28 If you say, ‘How we will persecute him!’
    and, ‘The root of the matter is found in him,’^(U)
29 be afraid of the sword,
    for wrath brings the punishment of the sword,
    so that you may know there is a judgment.”^(V)