﻿JOB.
Chapter 16.
Forsooth Job answered, and said, 
I have oft heard such things; all ye be heavy comforters. 
Whether words full of wind shall have an end? either anything is dis-easeful to thee, if thou speakest? 
Also I might speak things like to you, and I would, that your soul were for my soul; and I would comfort you by words, and I would move mine head on you; 
I would make you strong by my mouth, and I would move my lips as sparing you. 
But what shall I do? If I speak, my sorrow resteth not; and if I am still, it goeth not away from me. 
But now my sorrow hath oppressed me, and all my limbs be driven into nought. 
My rivellings say witnessing against me, and a false speaker is raised up against my face, and against-saith me. 
He gathered together his strong vengeance in me, and he menaced or threatened me, and he gnashed against me with his teeth; mine enemy hath beheld me with fearedful eyes. 
They opened their mouths upon me, and they said shame to me, and they smote my cheek; and they be filled with my pains. 
God hath enclosed me altogether at or with the wicked, and hath given me into the hands of wicked men. 
I, that rich man and famous sometime, am all-broken suddenly; he held my noll; he hath broken me, and hath set or put me as into a sign. 
And he hath encompassed me with his spears, he hath wounded altogether my loins; he hath not spared me, and he hath shed out mine entrails into the earth. 
He hath beaten me with wound upon wound; and he as a giant hath fallen in upon me. 
I sewed together a sackcloth upon my skin; and I covered my flesh with ashes. 
My face swelled of weeping, and mine eyelids waxed dark. 
I suffered these things without wickedness of mine hand, or work, when I had clean prayers to God. 
Earth, cover thou not my blood, and my cry find not in thee a place of hiding. 
For, lo! my witness is in heaven; and the Knower of my conscience is in high places. 
O! my friends, full of words; mine eye droppeth out tears to God. 
And I would, that a man were deemed so with God, as the son of man is deemed with his fellow. 
For lo! short years pass, and I go a path, by which I shall not turn again. 
