Job 19:1-22 (NRSV)

​1Then Job answered:
2"How long will you torment me,
and break me in pieces with words?
3These ten times you have cast reproach upon me;
are you not ashamed to wrong me?
4And even if it is true that I have erred,
my error remains with me.
5If indeed you magnify yourselves against me,
and make my humiliation an argument against me,
6know then that God has put me in the wrong,
and closed his net around me.
7Even when I cry out, 'Violence!' I am not answered;
I call aloud, but there is no justice.
8He has walled up my way so that I cannot pass,
and he has set darkness upon my paths.
9He has stripped my glory from me,
and taken the crown from my head.
10He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone,
he has uprooted my hope like a tree.
11He has kindled his wrath against me,
and counts me as his adversary.
12His troops come on together;
they have thrown up siegeworks against me,
and encamp around my tent.
13"He has put my family far from me,
and my acquaintances are wholly estranged from me.
14My relatives and my close friends have failed me;
15the guests in my house have forgotten me;
my serving girls count me as a stranger;
I have become an alien in their eyes.
16I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer;
I must myself plead with him.
17My breath is repulsive to my wife;
I am loathsome to my own family.
18Even young children despise me;
when I rise, they talk against me.
19All my intimate friends abhor me,
and those whom I loved have turned against me.
20My bones cling to my skin and to my flesh,
and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.
21Have pity on me, have pity on me, O you my friends,
for the hand of God has touched me!
22Why do you, like God, pursue me,
never satisfied with my flesh?

ELCA's daily Bible readings are chosen from "Revised Common Lectionary Daily Readings," prepared by Consultation on the Common Texts, © 2005.
All text is from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyrighted, 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches USA, and is used by permission. All rights reserved.