Job Continues: My Life Has No Hope

¹“Has not man a hard service on earth,

and are not his days like the days of a hired hand?

²Like a slave who longs for the shadow,

and like a hired hand who looks for his wages,

³so I am allotted months of emptiness,

and nights of misery are apportioned to me.

⁴When I lie down I say, ‘When shall I arise?’

But the night is long,

and I am full of tossing till the dawn.

⁵My flesh is clothed with worms and dirt;

my skin hardens, then breaks out afresh.

⁶My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle

and come to their end without hope.

⁷“Remember that my life is a breath;

my eye will never again see good.

⁸The eye of him who sees me will behold me no more;

while your eyes are on me, I shall be gone.

⁹As the cloud fades and vanishes,

so he who goes down to Sheol does not come up;

¹⁰he returns no more to his house,

nor does his place know him anymore.

¹¹“Therefore I will not restrain my mouth;

I will speak in the anguish of my spirit;

I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.

¹²Am I the sea, or a sea monster,

that you set a guard over me?

¹³When I say, ‘My bed will comfort me,

my couch will ease my complaint,’

¹⁴then you scare me with dreams

and terrify me with visions,

¹⁵so that I would choose strangling

and death rather than my bones.

¹⁶I loathe my life; I would not live forever.

Leave me alone, for my days are a breath.

¹⁷What is man, that you make so much of him,

and that you set your heart on him,

¹⁸visit him every morning

and test him every moment?

¹⁹How long will you not look away from me,

nor leave me alone till I swallow my spit?

²⁰If I sin, what do I do to you, you watcher of mankind?

Why have you made me your mark?

Why have I become a burden to you?

²¹Why do you not pardon my transgression

and take away my iniquity?

For now I shall lie in the earth;

you will seek me, but I shall not be.”