Job 10

1 My soul is weary of my life. I will release my words against myself. I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.

I am weary of my life; I will give free expression to my complaint; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.

2 I will say to God: Do not be willing to condemn me. Reveal to me why you judge me this way.

I will say to God, 'Do not merely condemn me; show me why you accuse me.

3 Does it seem good to you, if you find fault with me and oppress me, the work of your own hands, and assist the counsel of the impious?

Is it good to you that you should oppress me, to despise the work of your hands while you smile on the plans of the wicked?

4 Do you have bodily eyes? Or, just as man sees, will you see?

Do you have eyes of flesh? Do you see like a man sees?

5 Are your days just like the days of man, and are your years as the times of humans,

Are your days like the days of mankind or your years like the years of people,

6 so that you would inquire about my iniquity and examine my sin?

that you inquire after my iniquity and search after my sin,

7 And you know that I have done nothing impious, yet there is no one who can deliver from your hand.

although you know I am not guilty and there is no one who can rescue me from your hand?

8 Your hands have made me and formed me all around, and, in this way, do you suddenly throw me away?

Your hands have framed and fashioned me together round about, yet you are destroying me.

9 Remember, I ask you, that you have fashioned me like clay, and you will reduce me to dust.

Call to mind, I beg you, that you have fashioned me like clay; will you bring me into dust again?

10 Have you not extracted me like milk and curdled me like cheese?

Have you not poured me out like milk and curdled me like cheese?

11 You have clothed me with skin and flesh. You have put me together with bones and nerves.

You have clothed me with skin and flesh and knit me together with bones and sinews.

12 You have assigned to me life and mercy, and your visitation has preserved my spirit.

You have granted me life and covenant faithfulness; your help has guarded my spirit.

13 Though you may conceal this in your heart, yet I know that you remember everything.

Yet these things you hid in your heart— I know that this is what you were thinking:

14 If I have sinned, and you have spared me for an hour, why do you not endure me to be clean from my iniquity?

that if I sinned, you would notice it; you would not acquit me of my iniquity.

15 And if I should be impious, woe to me, and if I should be just, I will not lift up my head, being drenched with affliction and misery.

If I have acted wickedly, woe to me; and even if I acted righteously, I could not lift up my head, since I am filled with disgrace— see my affliction!

16 And because of pride, you will seize me like a lioness, and having returned, you torment me to an extraordinary degree.

If my head were lifted up, you would stalk me like a lion; and again you would show yourself with marvellous acts of power against me.

17 You renew your testimony against me, and you multiply your wrath against me, and these punishments make war within me.

You bring new witnesses against me and increase your anger against me; you attack me with fresh armies.

18 Why did you lead me out of the womb? If only I had been consumed, so that no eye would ever see me!

Why, then, have you brought me out of the womb? I wish I had given up my spirit and that no eye had ever seen me.

19 I should have been as if I had not been: transferred from the womb to the tomb.

I would have been as though I had never existed; I would have been carried from the womb to the grave.

20 Will not my few days be completed soon? Release me, therefore, so that I may lament my sorrows a little,

Are not my days only a few? Stop then, let me alone, so that I may have a little rest

21 before I depart and return no more to a land that is dark and covered with the fog of death,

before I go from where I will not return, to the land of darkness and of the shadow of death,

22 a land of misery and darkness, where the shadow of death, and nothing else but everlasting horror, dwells.

the land that is as dark as midnight, the land of the shadow of death, without any order, where the light is like midnight.'”