19:2 “How long will you go on making me angry, crushing me with words?
19:3 You’ve insulted me ten times already; aren’t you ashamed to treat me so badly?
19:4 Even if it’s true that I made a mistake, my error stays with me.
19:5 “You may take a superior attitude toward me and cite my disgrace as proof against me;
19:6 but know that it’s God who has put me in the wrong and closed his net around me.
19:7 If I cry, ‘Violence!’ no one hears me; I cry aloud, but there is no justice.
19:8 “He has fenced off my way, so that I can’t pass; he has covered my paths with darkness.
19:9 He has stripped me of my glory and removed the crown from my head.
19:10 He tears every part of me down — I am gone; he uproots my hope like a tree.
19:11 “Inflamed with anger against me, he counts me as one of his foes.
19:12 His troops advance together, they make their way against me and encamp around my tent.
19:13 “He has made my brothers keep their distance, those who know me are wholly estranged from me,
19:14 my kinsfolk have failed me, and my close friends have forgotten me.
19:15 Those living in my house consider me a stranger; my slave-girls too — in their view I’m a foreigner.
19:16 I call my servant, and he doesn’t answer, even if I beg him for a favor!
19:17 “My wife can’t stand my breath, I am loathsome to my own family.
19:18 Even young children despise me — if I stand up, they start jeering at me.
19:19 All my intimate friends abhor me, and those I loved have turned against me.
19:20 My bones stick to my skin and flesh; I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.
19:21 “Pity me, friends of mine, pity me! For the hand of God has struck me!
19:22 Must you pursue me as God does, never satisfied with my flesh?
19:23 I wish my words were written down, that they were inscribed in a scroll,
19:24 that, engraved with iron and filled with lead, they were cut into rock forever!
19:25 “But I know that my Redeemer lives, that in the end he will rise on the dust;
19:26 so that after my skin has been thus destroyed, then even without my flesh, I will see God.
19:27 I will see him for myself, my eyes, not someone else’s, will behold him. My heart grows weak inside me!
19:28 “If you say, ‘How will we persecute him?’ — the root of the matter is found in me.
19:29 You had best fear the sword, for anger brings the punishment of the sword, so that you will know there is judgment!”
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