Job, 10

¹ “My soul certainly feels a loathing toward my life. I will give vent to my concern about myself.^*1 I will speak in the bitterness of my soul!

² I shall say to God,^*1 ‘Do not pronounce me wicked. Cause me to know why it is that you are contending with me.

³ Is it good for you that you should do wrong, That you should reject [the product of] the hard work of your hands,^*1 And that upon the counsel of wicked ones you should actually beam?

⁴ Do you have eyes of flesh, Or is it as a mortal man sees that you see?

⁵ Are your days like the days of mortal man, Or your years just like the days of an able-bodied man,

⁶ That you should try to find my error And for my sin you should keep looking?

⁷ This in spite of your own knowledge that I am not in the wrong, And there is no one delivering out of your own hand?

⁸ Your own hands have shaped me so that they made me In entirety round about, and yet you would swallow me up.

⁹ Remember, please, that out of clay you have made me And to dust you will make me return.

¹⁰ Did you not proceed to pour me out as milk itself And like cheese to curdle me?

¹¹ With skin and flesh you proceeded to clothe me And with bones and sinews to weave me together.

¹² Life and loving-kindness^*1 you have worked with me; And your own care has guarded my spirit.^*2

¹³ And these things you have concealed in your heart. I well know that these things are with you.

¹⁴ If I have sinned and you have kept watching me And of my error you do not hold me innocent;

¹⁵ If I am actually in the wrong, too bad for me! And [if] I am actually in the right, I may not raise my head, Glutted with dishonor and saturated with affliction.

¹⁶ And [if] it acts haughtily, like a young lion you will hunt for me, And you will again show yourself marvelous in my case.

¹⁷ You will bring forth new witnesses^*1 of yours in front of me, And you will make your vexation with me greater; Hardship after hardship is with me.^*2

¹⁸ So why from a womb did you bring me out? Could I have expired,^*1 that not even an eye could see me,

¹⁹ There as though I had not come to be I should have become; From the belly to the burial place I should have been brought.’

²⁰ Are not my days few? Let him leave off, Let him turn his gaze from me, that I may brighten up a little

²¹ Before I go away—and I shall not come back— To the land of darkness and deep shadow,^*1

²² To the land of obscurity like gloom, of deep shadow And disorder, where it beams no more than gloom does.”