Job 10

10TH CHAPTER

Job Says to God: I Hate My Life

¹“I hate my life. 

I will freely express my complaint. 

I will speak as bitterly as I feel. 

²I will say to God, 

‘Don’t condemn me. 

Let me know why you are quarreling with me. 

³What do you gain by mistreating me, 

by rejecting the work of your hands 

while you favor the plans of the wicked? 

⁴Do you actually have human eyes? 

Do you see as a mortal sees? 

⁵Are your days like a mortal’s days? 

Are your years like a human’s years? 

⁶Is that why you look for guilt in me 

and search for sin in me? 

⁷You know I’m not guilty, 

but there is no one to rescue me from your hands. 

⁸“ ‘Your hands formed me and made every part of me, 

then you turned to destroy me. 

⁹Please remember that you made me out of clay 

and that you will return me to the dust again. 

¹⁰Didn’t you pour me out like milk 

and curdle me like cheese? 

¹¹Didn’t you dress me in skin and flesh 

and weave me together with bones and tendons? 

¹²You gave me life and mercy. 

Your watchfulness has preserved my spirit. 

¹³But in your heart you hid these things. 

I know this is what you did. 

¹⁴“ ‘If I sin, you watch me 

and will not free me from my guilt. 

¹⁵How terrible it will be for me if I’m guilty! 

Even if I’m righteous, I dare not lift up my head. 

I am filled with disgrace 

while I look on my misery. 

¹⁶Like a proud, ferocious lion you hunt me down. 

You keep working your miracles against me. 

¹⁷You keep finding new witnesses against me. 

You keep increasing your anger toward me. 

You keep bringing new armies against me. 

¹⁸“ ‘Why did you take me out of the womb? 

I wish I had breathed my last breath 

before anyone had laid eyes on me. 

¹⁹Then it would be as if I had never existed, 

as if I had been carried from the womb to the tomb. 

²⁰“ ‘Isn’t my life short enough? 

So stop ⸤this⸥, and leave me alone. 

Let me smile a little 

²¹before I go away 

to a land of darkness and gloom, 

²²to a dismal land of long shadows and confusion 

where light is as bright as darkness. 

I’ll never return.’ ”