Job 10

¹ I loathe my life;
I will give free rein to my complaint,
I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.

² I will say to God: Do not condemn me;
let me know why you contend against me.

³ Does it please you to oppress,
to despise the work of your own hands
while you smile on the counsel of the wicked?

⁴ Do you have eyes of flesh?
Do you see as a mortal sees?

⁵ Are your days like the days of a man,
your years like the years of a mortal,

⁶ that you search out my iniquity
and probe for my sin —

⁷ though you know I am not wicked,
and there is none to deliver from your hand?

⁸ Your hands fashioned me and made me,
then you turn and destroy me altogether.

⁹ Remember that you shaped me like clay;
will you return me now to dust?

¹⁰ Did you not pour me out like milk
and curdle me like cheese?

¹¹ You clothed me with skin and flesh
and knit me together with bones and sinews.

¹² You granted me life and steadfast love,
and your care has preserved my spirit.

¹³ Yet these things you hid in your heart —
I know that this was your purpose:

¹⁴ If I sin, you watch me
and will not acquit me of my iniquity.

¹⁵ If I am wicked — woe to me!
If I am righteous — I dare not lift my head,
full of shame, drunk with my affliction.

¹⁶ Bold as a lion, you hunt me;
you show yourself marvelous against me,
renewing your witnesses against me.

¹⁷ You bring fresh troops against me,
your anger swells against me,
wave upon wave of assault.

¹⁸ Why did you bring me out from the womb?
Would that I had died before any eye saw me,

¹⁹ and were as though I had never been,
carried from the womb straight to the grave.

²⁰ Are not the days of my life few?
Look away from me, that I may smile a little

²¹ before I go — and I shall not return —
to the land of darkness and deep shadow,

²² a land of gloom like thick darkness,
deep shadow and disorder,
where the light is like darkness.