Chapter
19
"How long will you torment me, and crush me with words?
You have reproached me ten times. You aren't ashamed that you attack me.
If it is true that I have erred, my error remains with myself.
If indeed you will magnify yourselves against me, and plead against me my reproach;
know now that God has subverted me, and has surrounded me with her net.
"Behold, I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard. I cry for help, but there is no justice.
She has walled up my way so that I can't pass, and has set darkness in my paths.
She has stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head.
She has broken me down on every side, and I am gone. My hope she has plucked up like a tree.
She has also kindled her wrath against me. She counts me among her adversaries.
Hers troops come on together, build a siege ramp against me, and encamp around my tent.
"She has put my sisters far from me. My acquaintances are wholly estranged from me.
My relatives have gone away. My familiar friends have forgotten me.
Those who dwell in my house, and my butlers, count me for a stranger. I am an alien in their sight.
I call to my servant, and she gives me no answer. I beg her with my mouth.
My breath is offensive to my husband. I am loathsome to the children of my own father.
Even young children despise me. If I arise, they speak against me.
All my familiar friends abhor me. They whom I loved have turned against me.
My bones stick to my skin and to my flesh. I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.
"Have pity on me, have pity on me, you my friends; for the hand of God has touched me.
Why do you persecute me as God, and are not satisfied with my flesh?
"Oh that my words were now written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book!
That with an iron pen and lead they were engraved in the rock forever!
But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives. In the end, she will stand upon the earth.
After my skin is destroyed, then in my flesh shall I see God,
Whom I, even I, shall see on my side. My eyes shall see, and not as a stranger. "My heart is consumed within me.
If you say, 'How we will persecute her!' because the root of the matter is found in me,
be afraid of the sword, for wrath brings the punishments of the sword, that you may know there is a judgment."