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.
My soul is tired of life; I will let my sad thoughts go free in words; my soul will make a bitter outcry.
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 put me down as a sinner; make clear to me what you have against 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?
What profit is it to you to be cruel, to give up the work of your hands, looking kindly on the design of evil-doers?
4 Do you have bodily eyes? Or, just as man sees, will you see?
Have you eyes of flesh, or do you see as man sees?
5 Are your days just like the days of man, and are your years as the times of humans,
Are your days as the days of man, or your years like his,
6 so that you would inquire about my iniquity and examine my sin?
That you take note of my sin, searching after my wrongdoing,
7 And you know that I have done nothing impious, yet there is no one who can deliver from your hand.
Though you see that I am not an evil-doer; and there is no one who is able to take a man out of your hands?
8 Your hands have made me and formed me all around, and, in this way, do you suddenly throw me away?
Your hands made me, and I was formed by you, but then, changing your purpose, you gave me up to destruction.
9 Remember, I ask you, that you have fashioned me like clay, and you will reduce me to dust.
O keep in mind that you made me out of earth; and will you send me back again to dust?
10 Have you not extracted me like milk and curdled me like cheese?
Was I not drained out like milk, becoming hard like cheese?
11 You have clothed me with skin and flesh. You have put me together with bones and nerves.
By you I was clothed with skin and flesh, and joined together with bones and muscles.
12 You have assigned to me life and mercy, and your visitation has preserved my spirit.
You have been kind to me, and your grace has been with me, and your care has kept my spirit safe.
13 Though you may conceal this in your heart, yet I know that you remember everything.
But you kept these things in the secret of your heart; I am certain this was in your thoughts:
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 did wrong, you would take note of it, and would not make me clear from sin:
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.
That, if I was an evil-doer, the curse would come on me; and if I was upright, my head would not be lifted up, being full of shame and overcome with trouble.
16 And because of pride, you will seize me like a lioness, and having returned, you torment me to an extraordinary degree.
And that if there was cause for pride, you would go after me like a lion; and again put out your wonders against me:
17 You renew your testimony against me, and you multiply your wrath against me, and these punishments make war within me.
That you would send new witnesses against me, increasing your wrath against me, and letting loose new armies on me.
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 did you make me come out of my mother's body? It would have been better for me to have taken my last breath, and for no eye to have seen me,
19 I should have been as if I had not been: transferred from the womb to the tomb.
And for me to have been as if I had not been; to have been taken from my mother's body straight to my last resting-place.
20 Will not my few days be completed soon? Release me, therefore, so that I may lament my sorrows a little,
Are not the days of my life small in number? Let your eyes be turned away from me, so that I may have a little pleasure,
21 before I depart and return no more to a land that is dark and covered with the fog of death,
Before I go to the place from which I will not come back, to the land where all is dark and black,
22 a land of misery and darkness, where the shadow of death, and nothing else but everlasting horror, dwells.
A land of thick dark, without order, where the very light is dark.
