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New Living Translation |   | |
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| | Job 16:1 | Then Job spoke again:
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| | Job 16:2 | "I have heard all this before. What miserable comforters you are!
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| | Job 16:3 | Won't you ever stop your flow of foolish words? What have I said that makes you speak so endlessly?
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| | Job 16:4 | I could say the same things if you were in my place. I could spout off my criticisms against you and shake my head at you.
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| | Job 16:5 | But that's not what I would do. I would speak in a way that helps you. I would try to take away your grief.
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| | Job 16:6 | But as it is, my grief remains no matter how I defend myself. And it does not help if I refuse to speak.
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| | Job 16:7 | "O God, you have ground me down and devastated my family.
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| | Job 16:8 | You have reduced me to skin and bones--as proof, they say, of my sins.
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| | Job 16:9 | God hates me and tears angrily at my flesh. He gnashes his teeth at me and pierces me with his eyes.
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| | Job 16:10 | People jeer and laugh at me. They slap my cheek in contempt. A mob gathers against me.
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| | Job 16:11 | God has handed me over to sinners. He has tossed me into the hands of the wicked.
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| | Job 16:12 | "I was living quietly until he broke me apart. He took me by the neck and dashed me to pieces. Then he set me up as his target.
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| | Job 16:13 | His archers surrounded me, and his arrows pierced me without mercy. The ground is wet with my blood.
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| | Job 16:14 | Again and again he smashed me, charging at me like a warrior.
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| | Job 16:15 | Here I sit in sackcloth. I have surrendered, and I sit in the dust.
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| | Job 16:16 | My eyes are red with weeping; darkness covers my eyes.
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| | Job 16:17 | Yet I am innocent, and my prayer is pure.
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| | Job 16:18 | "O earth, do not conceal my blood. Let it cry out on my behalf.
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| | Job 16:19 | Even now my witness is in heaven. My advocate is there on high.
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| | Job 16:20 | My friends scorn me, but I pour out my tears to God.
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| | Job 16:21 | Oh, that someone would mediate between God and me, as a person mediates between friends.
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| | Job 16:22 | For soon I must go down that road from which I will never return.
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