New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures — With References (Rbi8, en_US, 1984)

Job

¹ And Job proceeded to answer and say:

² “How long will YOU men keep irritating my soul And keep crushing me with words?

³ These ten times YOU proceeded to rebuke me; YOU are not ashamed [that] YOU deal so hard with me.

⁴ And, granted that I have made a mistake, It is with me that my mistake will lodge.^*1

LXX adds: “by saying a thing that was not necessary, and my sayings (utterances) are mistaken (err) and not seasonable (timely).”

⁵ If for a fact against me YOU men do put on great airs, And YOU show my reproach to be proper against me,

⁶ KNOW, then, that God^*1 himself has misled me, And his hunting net he has closed in upon me.

⁷ Look! I keep crying out, ‘Violence!’ but I get no answer; I keep crying for help, but there is no justice.

⁸ My very path he has blocked with a stone wall, and I cannot pass over; And upon my roadways he puts darkness itself.

⁹ My own glory he has stripped from me, And he takes away the crown of my head.

¹⁰ He pulls me down on all sides, and I go away; And he pulls my hope out just like a tree.

¹¹ His anger also grows hot against me, And he keeps reckoning me as an adversary of his.

¹² Unitedly his troops come and cast up their way against me, And they camp round about my tent.

¹³ My own brothers he has put far away from me, And the very ones knowing me have even turned aside from me.

¹⁴ My intimate acquaintances^*1 have ceased to be, And those known by me have themselves forgotten me,

¹⁵ Those residing as aliens in my house; and my slave girls themselves reckon me as a stranger; A real foreigner I have become in their eyes.

¹⁶ To my servant I have called, but he does not answer. With my own mouth I keep imploring him for compassion.

¹⁷ My breath^*1 itself has become loathsome to my wife, And I have become foul-smelling to the sons of my [mother’s] belly.

¹⁸ Also young boys themselves have rejected me; Let me but rise up, and they begin to speak against me.

¹⁹ All the men of my intimate group detest me, And those whom I loved have turned against me.

²⁰ To my skin and to my flesh my bones actually cleave, And I escape with the skin of my teeth.^*1

“And my flesh becomes hairless in my teeth,” by another derivation of the verb and some corrections of M. Compare 13:14.

²¹ Show me some favor, show me some favor, O YOU my companions, For God’s^*1 own hand has touched me.

²² Why do YOU men keep persecuting me as God^*1 does, And not become satisfied with my very flesh?

²³ O that now my words were written down! O that in a book they were even inscribed!

²⁴ With an iron stylus and [with] lead, Forever in the rock O that they were hewn!

²⁵ And I myself well know that my redeemer^*1 is alive, And that, coming after [me], he will rise up over [the] dust.

“My redeemer (repurchaser).” By extension of thought, “my avenger (vindicator).” Heb., goʹʼali; Lat., re·demʹptor. See Nu 35:21; Ps 19:14; Pr 23:11; Isa 63:16; Jer 50:34.

²⁶ And after my skin, [which] they have skinned off,—this! Yet reduced in my flesh^*1 I shall behold God,^*2

²⁷ Whom even I shall behold for myself, And [whom] my very eyes will certainly see, but not some stranger. My kidneys have failed deep within me.

²⁸ For YOU men say, ‘Why do we keep persecuting him?’ When the very root of [the] matter is found in me.^*1

²⁹ Be frightened for yourselves because of a sword, For the sword means a raging against errors, In order that YOU men may know there is a judge.”^*1

“There is a judge,” T and by a different vowel pointing of M (see 1Sa 24:15); others make it read, “there is an Almighty.”