Rhyming Job, Chapter 19

Rhyming Job, Chapter 19

Then Job replied, “How long, you’ll torment me
and crush me with your words contin’ously?
Ten times now have you brought to me reproach;
how you attack me, shame without, unknown.
If it is true that I, astray have gone,
my error is concern of mine alone.
If you’d exalt yourselves o’er me indeed
and use humiliation against me,
then know that God, the one who has, me, wronged;
the place he’s drug his net: me, all around.

“Though I cry, ‘Violence!’, there’s no reply;
no justice even though, for help, I cry.
He’s blocked my way so that I cannot pass;
in darkness has he shrouded all my paths.
My honor, that, what he has stripped me of,
and from my head, where he, my crown, removed.
He tears me down, I’m gone on ev’ry side;
my hope uprooted as a tree, just like.
His anger burns against me; enemies
of his, he counts me in their company.
His troops advance in force; they build a ramp
for sieging ‘gainst me, ‘round my tent, encamped.

“He, my acquaintances, estranged from me;
from me, alienated family.
They’ve gone so far away, my relatives.
How I’m forgotten by my closest friends,
My female servants, guests, they apprehend,
they count me as a foreigner ‘mongst them.
They, as a stranger, on me cast their eyes.
My servant, summoned — answers, he despised,
e’en though I beg him, words from my own mouth.
Offensive, even to my wife, my breath;
to my own family, loathsome is my life;
the little boys, e’en they, their scorning, rife;
when I appear, it’s me they ridicule.
My closest friends find me detestable;
The ones I love, me, turned themselves against.
I’ve nothing left except my bones and skin;
my teeth, its skin, by that I have escaped.

“Have pity on me, friends, for pity’s sake,
for it, the hand of God has struck me, bruised.
Pursue me now, you, why, like God pursues?
My flesh is less than all that you’d consume?

“Oh, that my words, recorded, on a scroll
were written down, and with an iron tool,
inscribed on lead, to rock engraved fore’er!
I know that my redeemer lives, that there
on earth, where he will stand, until the end.
And after it has been destroyed, my skin,
yet in my flesh I will see God again;
It’s I myself the one who will see him
with my own eyes–I, not another one.
How my heart yearns, my chest, so deep within.

“If you say, ‘Since the root, how, him, we’ll hound,
of all his troubles, is, within him, found.
You should fear for yourselves, of that, the sword;
that weapon will bring punishment for wrath,
what it will bring, and it, you can’t ignore,
that method by which judgment has been passed.”