| 1 | “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, | |
| 3 | so I am allotted months of emptiness, and nights of misery are apportioned to me. | |
| 4 | When I lie down I say, ‘When shall I rise?’ But the night is long, and I am full of tossing until dawn. | |
| 5 | My flesh is clothed with worms and dirt; my skin hardens, then breaks out again. | |
| 6 | My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and come to their end without hope. | |
| 7 | “Remember that my life is a breath; my eye will never again see good. | |
| 8 | The eye that beholds me will see me no more; while your eyes are upon me, I shall be gone. | |
| 9 | As the cloud fades and vanishes, so those who go down to Sheol do not come up; | |
| 10 | they return no more to their houses, nor do their places know them any more. | |
| 11 | “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. | |
| 12 | Am I the Sea, or the Dragon, that you set a guard over me? | |
| 13 | When I say, ‘My bed will comfort me, my couch will ease my complaint,’ | |
| 14 | then you scare me with dreams and terrify me with visions, | |
| 15 | so that I would choose strangling and death rather than this body. | |
| 16 | I loathe my life; I would not live forever. Let me alone, for my days are a breath. | |
| 17 | What are human beings, that you make so much of them, that you set your mind on them, | |
| 18 | visit them every morning, test them every moment? | |
| 19 | Will you not look away from me for a while, let me alone until I swallow my spittle? | |
| 20 | 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? | |
| 21 | 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.” |