Job 10

Job’s Plea to God

¹ “I loathe my own life; I will express my complaint and speak in the bitterness of my soul.

² I will say to God: Do not condemn me! Let me know why You prosecute me.

³ Does it please You to oppress me, to reject the work of Your hands and favor the schemes of the wicked?

⁴ Do You have eyes of flesh? Do You see as man sees?

⁵ Are Your days like those of a mortal, or Your years like those of a man,

⁶ that You should seek my iniquity and search out my sin—

⁷ though You know that I am not guilty, and there is no deliverance from Your hand?

⁸ Your hands shaped me and altogether formed me. Would You now turn and destroy me?

⁹ Please remember that You molded me like clay. Would You now return me to 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 loving devotion,¹ and Your care has preserved my spirit.

¹³ Yet You concealed these things in Your heart, and I know that this was in Your mind:

¹⁴ If I sinned, You would take note, and would not acquit me of my iniquity.

¹⁵ If I am guilty, woe to me! And even if I am righteous, I cannot lift my head. I am full of shame and aware of my affliction.

¹⁶ Should I hold my head high, You would hunt me like a lion, and again display Your power against me.

¹⁷ You produce new witnesses against me and multiply Your anger toward me. Hardships assault me in wave after wave.

¹⁸ Why then did You bring me from the womb? Oh, that I had died, and no eye had seen me!

¹⁹ If only I had never come to be, but had been carried from the womb to the grave.

²⁰ Are my days not few? Withdraw from me, that I may have a little comfort,

²¹ before I go—never to return— to a land of darkness and gloom,

²² to a land of utter darkness, of deep shadow and disorder, where even the light is like darkness.”