Chapter 10

¹“My soul is weary of my life;

I will give free course to my complaint.

I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.

²I will tell God, ‘Do not condemn me,

Show me why you contend with me.

³Is it good to you that you should oppress,

That you should despise the work of your hands,

And smile on the counsel of the wicked?

⁴Do you have eyes of flesh?

Or do you see as man sees?

⁵Are your days as the days of mortals,

Or your years as man’s years,

⁶That you inquire after my iniquity,

And search after my sin?

⁷Although you know that I am not wicked,

There is no one who can deliver out of your hand.

⁸‘Your hands have framed me and fashioned me altogether;

Yet you destroy me.

⁹Remember, I beg you, that you have fashioned me as clay.

Will you bring me into dust again?

¹⁰Haven’t you poured me out like milk,

And curdled me like cheese?

¹¹You have clothed me with skin and flesh,

And knit me together with bones and sinews.

¹²You have granted me life and loving kindness.

Your visitation has preserved my spirit.

¹³Yet you hid these things in your heart.

I know that this is with you:

¹⁴If I sin, then you mark me.

You will not acquit me from my iniquity.

¹⁵If I am wicked, woe to me.

If I am righteous, I still shall not lift up my head,

Being filled with disgrace,

And conscious of my affliction.

¹⁶If my head is held high, you hunt me like a lion.

Again you show yourself powerful to me.

¹⁷You renew your witnesses against me,

And increase your indignation on me.

Changes and warfare are with me.

¹⁸“‘Why, then, have you brought me forth out of the womb?

I wish I had given up the spirit, and no eye had seen me.

¹⁹I should have been as though I had not been.

I should have been carried from the womb to the grave.

²⁰Aren’t my days few? Cease then,

Leave me alone, that I may find a little comfort,

²¹Before I go where I shall not return from,

To the land of darkness and of the shadow of death;

²²The land dark as midnight,

Of the shadow of death, without any order,

Where the light is as midnight.’”