Study

Job: My Suffering Is without End

 7

“Do not human beings have a hard service on earth,

and are not their days like the days of a laborer?

2

Like a slave who longs for the shadow,

and like laborers who look for their wages,

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so I am allotted months of emptiness,

and nights of misery are apportioned to me.

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When I lie down I say, ‘When shall I rise?’

But the night is long,

and I am full of tossing until dawn.

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My flesh is clothed with worms and dirt;

my skin hardens, then breaks out again.

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My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle,

and come to their end without hope.

 

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“Remember that my life is a breath;

my eye will never again see good.

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The eye that beholds me will see me no more;

while your eyes are upon me, I shall be gone.

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As the cloud fades and vanishes,

so those who go down to Sheol do not come up;

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they return no more to their houses,

nor do their places know them any more.

 

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“Therefore I will not restrain my mouth;

I will speak in the anguish of my spirit;

I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.

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Am I the Sea, or the Dragon,

that you set a guard over me?

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When I say, ‘My bed will comfort me,

my couch will ease my complaint,’

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then you scare me with dreams

and terrify me with visions,

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so that I would choose strangling

and death rather than this body.

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I loathe my life; I would not live forever.

Let me alone, for my days are a breath.

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What are human beings, that you make so much of them,

that you set your mind on them,

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visit them every morning,

test them every moment?

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Will you not look away from me for a while,

let me alone until I swallow my spittle?

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If I sin, what do I do to you, you watcher of humanity?

Why have you made me your target?

Why have I become a burden to you?

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Why do you not pardon my transgression

and take away my iniquity?

For now I shall lie in the earth;

you will seek me, but I shall not be.”