2“I have heard many such things;
miserable comforters are you all.
3Shall windy words have an end?
Or what provokes you that you answer?
4I also could speak as you do,
if you were in my place;
I could join words together against you
and shake my head at you.
5I could strengthen you with my mouth,
and the solace of my lips would assuage your pain.

6“If I speak, my pain is not assuaged,
and if I forbear, how much of it leaves me?
7Surely now God has worn me out;
he has^a made desolate all my company.
8And he has shriveled me up,
which is a witness against me,
and my leanness has risen up against me;
it testifies to my face.
9He has torn me in his wrath and hated me;
he has gnashed his teeth at me;
my adversary sharpens his eyes against me.
10Men have gaped at me with their mouth;
they have struck me insolently on the cheek;
they mass themselves together against me.
11God gives me up to the ungodly
and casts me into the hands of the wicked.
12I was at ease, and he broke me apart;
he seized me by the neck and dashed me to pieces;
he set me up as his target;
13his archers surround me.
He slashes open my kidneys and does not spare;
he pours out my gall on the ground.
14He breaks me with breach upon breach;
he runs upon me like a warrior.
15I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin
and have laid my strength in the dust.
16My face is red with weeping,
and on my eyelids is deep darkness,
17although there is no violence in my hands,
and my prayer is pure.

18“O earth, cover not my blood,
and let my cry find no resting place.
19Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven,
and he who testifies for me is on high.
20My friends scorn me;
my eye pours out tears to God,
21that he would argue the case of a man with God,
as^b a son of man does with his neighbor.
22For when a few years have come
I shall go the way from which I shall not return.