Job 10

¹  “My soul is weary of my life.
    I will give free course to my complaint.
    I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.
² I will tell God, ‘Do not condemn me.
    Show me why you contend with me.
³ Is it good to you that you should oppress,
    that you should despise the work of your hands,
    and smile on the counsel of the wicked?
⁴ Do you have eyes of flesh?
    Or do you see as man sees?
⁵ Are your days as the days of mortals,
    or your years as man’s years,
⁶ that you inquire after my iniquity,
    and search after my sin?
⁷ Although you know that I am not wicked,
    there is no one who can deliver out of your hand.

⁸ “‘Your hands have framed me and fashioned me altogether,
    yet you destroy me.
⁹ Remember, I beg you, that you have fashioned me as clay.
    Will you bring me into dust again?
¹⁰ Haven’t you poured me out like milk,
    and curdled me like cheese?
¹¹ You have clothed me with skin and flesh,
    and knit me together with bones and sinews.
¹² You have granted me life and loving kindness.
    Your visitation has preserved my spirit.
¹³ Yet you hid these things in your heart.
    I know that this is with you:
¹⁴ if I sin, then you mark me.
    You will not acquit me from my iniquity.
¹⁵ If I am wicked, woe to me.
    If I am righteous, I still will not lift up my head,
    being filled with disgrace,
    and conscious of my affliction.
¹⁶ If my head is held high, you hunt me like a lion.
    Again you show yourself powerful to me.
¹⁷ You renew your witnesses against me,
    and increase your indignation on me.
    Changes and warfare are with me.

¹⁸ “‘Why, then, have you brought me out of the womb?
    I wish I had given up the spirit, and no eye had seen me.
¹⁹ I should have been as though I had not been.
    I should have been carried from the womb to the grave.
²⁰ Aren’t my days few?
    Stop!
Leave me alone, that I may find a little comfort,
²¹     before I go where I will not return from,
    to the land of darkness and of the shadow of death;
²² the land dark as midnight,
    of the shadow of death,
    without any order,
    where the light is as midnight.’”

Job 9   ■   Job 11