[1] Job: I hate my life, so I will unload the full weight of my grievance against God. Let me speak and reveal the bitterness I am harboring. [2] I will say to God: Don't find me guilty; just explain the charges You have against me. [3] Does it please You to oppress, and is this why You spurn me, the work of Your hands, and yet Your smile shines down upon the plots of the wicked? [4] Do You have human eyes so that Your outlook is short? Do You see as through human frailties? [5] Are Your days like mortals' limited days? Are Your years like mortals' limited years? [6] Is this why You seek out my faults or You go in search of all my error? [7] You know well that I am not guilty, yet nothing can free me from Your overwhelming power. [8] Your hands formed and made me whole, yet now You turn to crush. [9] Recall how You molded me like clay. Will You now render me back to dust? [10] Didn't You pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese? [11] Didn't You clothe me in skin and flesh, weave my bone and sinew together? [12] Your care has saved my spirit, and You have given me life and loyalty; [13] Yet I know what is in You, what Your heart has always hidden. [14] If I sin, You see it, watching ever so closely, and You do not acquit me of my guilt. [15] If I am wicked, woe is me; even if I am innocent, I cannot take a chance and lift my head Because I'm gorged with disgrace. Gaze on my misery! [16] If I do raise my head, then like a lion, You hunt me; Like a night sky turned threatening, You unfold Your power against me so that others marvel; [17] Like a prosecutor, You drag in witnesses against me; You escalate Your fury against me, coming in waves to pound on me. [18] So then, why did You bother to drag me out of the womb at all? I should have just died before any eye could see me. [19] It should have been as though I had never been: plucked from the womb, carried to the tomb. [20] Aren't my days almost finished anyway? Stand back, leave me alone, and let me have a scrap of comfort [21] Before I go to the place from which I won't return, to the land of utter darkness and still shadows, [22] The land of deep, unending night, of blackness and shadowy chaos where the only illumination is more darkness.
