Job 10

I will speak in the bitterness of my soul

¹I am sick of my life; \q I will give free rein to my complaint; \q I will speak out of the bitterness of my soul. ²I will say to God: Do not condemn me; \q tell me what charges you have against me. ³Does it please you to oppress me, \q to reject the work of your own hands, \q while you smile on the schemes of the wicked? ⁴Do you have human eyes? \q Do you see things as a mortal sees them? ⁵Are your days like the days of a mortal, \q or your years like a human lifetime, ⁶that you must hunt for my guilt \q and search out my sin, ⁷although you know that I am not guilty, \q and that no one can rescue me from your hand? ⁸Your hands shaped me and made me; \q and now you turn around and destroy me completely.^{a 9}Remember that you molded me like clay; \q will you now turn me back to dust? ¹⁰Did you not pour me out like milk \q and let me thicken like cheese? ¹¹You clothed me with skin and flesh \q and knit me together with bones and sinews. ¹²You gave me life and showed me faithful love, \q and your care has watched over my spirit. ¹³Yet all the while you hid this in your heart; \q I know that this was your purpose. ¹⁴If I sinned, you would be watching me \q and would not let my guilt go unpunished. ¹⁵If I am guilty, woe to me! \q And if I am in the right, I still cannot lift up my head, \q for I am filled with shame and see only my misery.^{b 16}If I hold my head high, you hunt me like a lion \q and again show your wondrous power against me. ¹⁷You bring new witnesses against me \q and increase your anger toward me; \q you send wave after wave of troops against me. ¹⁸Why did you bring me out of the womb? \q I wish I had died before any eye had seen me. ¹⁹I would be as if I had never existed, \q carried straight from the womb to the grave. ²⁰Are not my days few? Then stop! \q Leave me alone, so I can have a little cheer,^{c 21}before I go to the place from which I will not return, \q to the land of darkness and deep shadow,^{d 22}a land of gloom as dark as night, \q of deep shadow without any order, \q where even the light is like darkness.