191 Job answered: 2 "How long are you going to keep battering away at me, pounding me with these harangues? 3 Time after time after time you jump all over me. Do you have no conscience, abusing me like this? 4 Even if I have, somehow or other, gotten off the track, what business is that of yours? 5 Why do you insist on putting me down, using my troubles as a stick to beat me? 6 Tell it to God - he's the one behind all this, he's the one who dragged me into this mess. 7 "Look at me - I shout 'Murder!' and I'm ignored; I call for help and no one bothers to stop.
8 God threw a barricade across my path - I'm stymied; he turned out all the lights - I'm stuck in the dark. 9 He destroyed my reputation, robbed me of all self-respect. 10 He tore me apart piece by piece - I'm ruined! Then he yanked out hope by the roots. 11 He's angry with me - oh, how he's angry! He treats me like his worst enemy. 12 He has launched a major campaign against me, using every weapon he can think of, coming at me from all sides at once. I Know That God Lives 13 "God alienated my family from me; 14 everyone who knows me avoids me. My relatives and friends have all left; houseguests forget I ever existed. 15 The servant girls treat me like a bum off the street, look at me like they've never seen me before. 16 I call my attendant and he ignores me, ignores me even though I plead with him. 17 My wife can't stand to be around me anymore. I'm repulsive to my family. 18 Even street urchins despise me; when I come out, they taunt and jeer. 19 Everyone I've ever been close to abhors me; my dearest loved ones reject me. 20 I'm nothing but a bag of bones; my life hangs by a thread. 21 "Oh, friends, dear friends, take pity on me. God has come down hard on me! 22 Do you have to be hard on me too? Don't you ever tire of abusing me?
23 "If only my words were written in a book - 24 better yet, chiseled in stone! 25 Still, I know that God lives - the One who gives me back my life - and eventually he'll take his stand on earth. 26 And I'll see him - even though I get skinned alive! - 27 see God myself, with my very own eyes. Oh, how I long for that day! 28 "If you're thinking, 'How can we get through to him, get him to see that his trouble is all his own fault?' 29 Forget it. Start worrying about yourselves. Worry about your own sins and God's coming judgment, for judgment is most certainly on the way."
31 Then Job broke the silence. He spoke up and cursed his fate: 2 3 "Obliterate the day I was born. Blank out the night I was conceived! 4 Let it be a black hole in space. May God above forget it ever happened. Erase it from the books! 5 May the day of my birth be buried in deep darkness, shrouded by the fog, swallowed by the night. 6 And the night of my conception - the devil take it! Rip the date off the calendar, delete it from the almanac. 7 Oh, turn that night into pure nothingness - no sounds of pleasure from that night, ever! 8 May those who are good at cursing curse that day. Unleash the sea beast, Leviathan, on it. 9 May its morning stars turn to black cinders, waiting for a daylight that never comes, never once seeing the first light of dawn. 10 And why? Because it released me from my mother's womb into a life with so much trouble.
11 "Why didn't I die at birth, my first breath out of the womb my last? 12 Why were there arms to rock me, and breasts for me to drink from? 13 I could be resting in peace right now, asleep forever, feeling no pain, 14 In the company of kings and statesmen in their royal ruins, 15 Or with princes resplendent in their gold and silver tombs. 16 Why wasn't I stillborn and buried with all the babies who never saw light, 17 Where the wicked no longer trouble anyone and bone-weary people get a long-deserved rest? 18 Prisoners sleep undisturbed, never again to wake up to the bark of the guards. 19 The small and the great are equals in that place, and slaves are free from their masters.
20 "Why does God bother giving light to the miserable, why bother keeping bitter people alive, 21 Those who want in the worst way to die, and can't, who can't imagine anything better than death, 22 Who count the day of their death and burial the happiest day of their life? 23 What's the point of life when it doesn't make sense, when God blocks all the roads to meaning? 24 "Instead of bread I get groans for my supper, then leave the table and vomit my anguish. 25 The worst of my fears has come true, what I've dreaded most has happened. 26 My repose is shattered, my peace destroyed. No rest for me, ever - death has invaded life."
