Job 10

Chapter 10

Job Frames His Plea to God

¹“I am disgusted with my life.

Let me complain freely.

My bitter soul must complain.

²I will say to God, ‘Don’t simply condemn me—

tell me the charge you are bringing against me.

³What do you gain by oppressing me?

Why do you reject me, the work of your own hands,

while smiling on the schemes of the wicked?

⁴Are your eyes like those of a human?

Do you see things only as people see them?

⁵Is your lifetime only as long as ours?

Is your life so short

⁶that you must quickly probe for my guilt

and search for my sin?

⁷Although you know I am not guilty,

no one can rescue me from your hands.

⁸“ ‘You formed me with your hands; you made me,

yet now you completely destroy me.

⁹Remember that you made me from dust—

will you turn me back to dust so soon?

¹⁰You guided my conception

and formed me in the womb.

¹¹You clothed me with skin and flesh,

and you knit my bones and sinews together.

¹²You gave me life and showed me your unfailing love.

My life was preserved by your care.

¹³“ ‘Yet your real motive—

your true intent—

¹⁴was to watch me, and if I sinned,

you would not forgive my guilt.

¹⁵If I am guilty, too bad for me;

and even if I’m innocent, I can’t hold my head high,

because I am filled with shame and misery.

¹⁶And if I hold my head high, you hunt me like a lion

and display your awesome power against me.

¹⁷Again and again you witness against me.

You pour out your growing anger on me

and bring fresh armies against me.

¹⁸“ ‘Why, then, did you deliver me from my mother’s womb?

Why didn’t you let me die at birth?

¹⁹It would be as though I had never existed,

going directly from the womb to the grave.

²⁰I have only a few days left, so leave me alone,

that I may have a moment of comfort

²¹before I leave—never to return—

for the land of darkness and utter gloom.

²²It is a land as dark as midnight,

a land of gloom and confusion,

where even the light is dark as midnight.’ ”