| 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.” |