Job replied to the three friends again

16 Job replied to Eliphaz and the others:

2 “I have heard things like that before;

all of you, instead of helping me, are only causing me to feel more miserable.

3 Will your speeches, which are only hot air, never end [RHQ]?

Eliphaz, what bothers/irritates you so much that you continue replying to me?

4 If it were you three and not I who were suffering,

I could say the things that you are saying;

I could make great speeches to criticize/condemn you,

and I could shake my head at you to ridicule you.

5 But, unlike all of you, with what I said [MTY] I would encourage you

and try to cause your pain to be less.

6 “But now, if I talk, my pain does not decrease,

and if I am silent, my pain still certainly does not [RHQ] go away.

7 God has now taken away all my strength,

and he has destroyed my family.

8 He has shriveled me up,

and people think that shows that I am a sinner.

And people see that I am only skin and bones,

and they think that proves that I am guilty.

9 Because God is very angry with me and hates me,

it is as though he is a wild animal that [MET] has gnashed his teeth at me

because he is my enemy.

10 People gape/stare at me with their mouths open to sneer at me;

they have struck me on the face/cheek to ridicule me,

and they crowd around me to threaten me.

11 It is as though God has handed me over to ungodly people

and turned me over to the wicked [DOU].

12 Previously, I was living peacefully,

but he crushed me;

it is as though he grabbed my neck and smashed me to pieces.

It is as though [MET] he set me up like a target;

13 people are surrounding me and shooting arrows at me.

His arrows pierce my kidneys

and cause the bile from my liver to spill onto the ground,

and God does not pity me at all.

14 It is as though [MET] I am a wall that he is breaking through;

he rushes at me like [SIM] a soldier attacking his enemies.

15 “Because I am mourning, I wear pieces of rough cloth that I have sewed together,

and I sit here in the dirt, very depressed/discouraged.

16 My face is red because I have cried very much,

and there are dark circles around my eyes.

17 All this has happened to me even though I have not acted violently toward anyone,

and I always pray sincerely/honestly to God.

18 When I die, I want the ground [APO] to act as though I had been murdered and cry out against those who killed me,

and I do not want anyone to stop me while I am demanding that God act justly toward me.

19 But even now, I know that there is someone in heaven who will testify for me,

and he will say that what I have done is right.

20 My three friends scorn/ridicule me,

but my eyes are full of tears while I cry out to God.

21 I pray that the one who knows what I have done would come to plead with God for me

like people plead for their friends.

22 I say this because within a few years I will die;

I will walk along the roadto the grave from which I will never return.”