16:2 ‘I have heard many such things; miserable comforters are you all.
16:3 Have windy words no limit? Or what provokes you that you keep on talking?
16:4 I also could talk as you do, if you were in my place; I could join words together against you, and shake my head at you.
16:5 I could encourage you with my mouth, and the solace of my lips would assuage your pain.
16:6 ‘If I speak, my pain is not assuaged, and if I forbear, how much of it leaves me?
16:7 Surely now God has worn me out; he has made desolate all my company.
16:8 And he has shrivelled me up, which is a witness against me; my leanness has risen up against me, and it testifies to my face.
16:9 He has torn me in his wrath, and hated me; he has gnashed his teeth at me; my adversary sharpens his eyes against me.
16:10 They have gaped at me with their mouths; they have struck me insolently on the cheek; they mass themselves together against me.
16:11 God gives me up to the ungodly, and casts me into the hands of the wicked.
16:12 I was at ease, and he broke me in two; he seized me by the neck and dashed me to pieces; he set me up as his target;
16:13 his archers surround me. He slashes open my kidneys, and shows no mercy; he pours out my gall on the ground.
16:14 He bursts upon me again and again; he rushes at me like a warrior.
16:15 I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin, and have laid my strength in the dust.
16:16 My face is red with weeping, and deep darkness is on my eyelids,
16:17 though there is no violence in my hands, and my prayer is pure.
16:18 ‘O earth, do not cover my blood; let my outcry find no resting-place.
16:19 Even now, in fact, my witness is in heaven, and he that vouches for me is on high.
16:20 My friends scorn me; my eye pours out tears to God,
16:21 that he would maintain the right of a mortal with God, as one does for a neighbour.
16:22 For when a few years have come, I shall go the way from which I shall not return.
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