Job Continues: A Plea to God

¹“I uloathe my life;

I will give free utterance to my vcomplaint;

I will speak in wthe bitterness of my soul.

²I will say to God, Do not xcondemn me;

let me know why you ycontend against me.

³zDoes it seem good to you to oppress,

to despise athe work of your hands

band favor the designs of the wicked?

⁴Have you ceyes of flesh?

dDo you see as man sees?

⁵Are your days as the days of man,

or your eyears as a man's years,

⁶that you fseek out my iniquity

and search for my sin,

⁷although you gknow that I am not guilty,

and there is hnone to deliver out of your hand?

⁸iYour hands fashioned and made me,

and now you have destroyed me altogether.

⁹Remember that you have made me like jclay;

and will you return me to the kdust?

¹⁰Did you not pour me out like milk

and curdle me like cheese?

¹¹You clothed me with skin and flesh,

and knit me together with bones and sinews.

¹²You have granted me life and steadfast love,

and your care has preserved my spirit.

¹³Yet these things you hid in your heart;

I know that lthis was your purpose.

¹⁴If I sin, you mwatch me

and do not nacquit me of my iniquity.

¹⁵oIf I am guilty, woe to me!

If I am pin the right, I cannot lift up my head,

for I am filled with disgrace

and qlook on my affliction.

¹⁶And were my head lifted up,1 you would hunt me like ra lion

and again work swonders against me.

¹⁷You renew your twitnesses against me

and increase your vexation toward me;

you ubring fresh troops against me.

¹⁸v“Why did you bring me out from the womb?

Would that I had died before any eye had seen me

¹⁹wand were as though I had not been,

carried from the womb to the grave.

²⁰xAre not my days few?

yThen cease, and leave me alone, zthat I may find a little cheer

²¹before I go—and aI shall not return—

to the land of bdarkness and cdeep shadow,

²²the land of gloom like thick darkness,

like deep shadow without any order,

where light is as thick darkness.”