Job 10 / 42
- 1
(Job Continues: A Plea to God)
"I loathe my life;
I will give free utterance 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 seem good to you to oppress,
to despise the work of your hands
and favor the designs of the wicked?
- 4
Have you eyes of flesh?
Do you see as man sees?
- 5
Are your days as the days of man,
or your years as a man's years,
- 6
that you seek out my iniquity
and search for my sin,
- 7
although you know that I am not guilty,
and there is none to deliver out of your hand?
- 8
Your hands fashioned and made me,
and now you have destroyed me altogether.
- 9
Remember that you have made me like clay;
and will you return me to the 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 have 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 do not acquit me of my iniquity.
- 15
If 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.
- 16
And were my head lifted up, you would hunt me like a lion
and again work wonders against me.
- 17
You 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
- 19
and were as though I had not been,
carried from the womb to the grave.
- 20
Are not my days few?
Then cease, and leave me alone, that I may find a little cheer
- 21
before I go--and I shall not return--
to the land of darkness and deep shadow,
- 22
the land of gloom like thick darkness,
like deep shadow without any order,
where light is as thick darkness."