Job Continues: A Plea to God

¹“I loathe my life;

I will give free utterance to my complaint;

I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.

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

let me know why you contend against me.

³Does it seem good to you to oppress,

to despise the work of your hands

and favor the designs of the wicked?

⁴Have you eyes of flesh?

Do you see as man sees?

⁵Are your days as the days of man,

or your years as a man's years,

⁶that you seek out my iniquity

and search for my sin,

⁷although you know that I am not guilty,

and there is none to deliver out of your hand?

⁸Your hands fashioned and made me,

and now you have destroyed me altogether.

⁹Remember that you have made me like clay;

and will you return me to the dust?

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 this was your purpose.

¹⁴If I sin, you watch me

and do not acquit me of my iniquity.

¹⁵If I am guilty, woe to me!

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

for I am filled with disgrace

and look on my affliction.

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

and again work wonders against me.

¹⁷You renew your witnesses against me

and increase your vexation toward me;

you bring fresh troops against me.

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

Would that I had died before any eye had seen me

¹⁹and were as though I had not been,

carried from the womb to the grave.

²⁰Are not my days few?

Then cease, and leave me alone, that I may find a little cheer

²¹before I go—and I shall not return—

to the land of darkness and deep shadow,

²²the land of gloom like thick darkness,

like deep shadow without any order,

where light is as thick darkness.”