Job 7

Chapter 7

¹“Has not man a hard service upon earth,

and are not his days like the days of a hireling?

²Like a slave who longs for the shadow,

and like a hireling who looks for his wages,

³so I am allotted months of emptiness,

and nights of misery are apportioned to me.

⁴When I lie down I say, ‘When shall I arise?’

But the night is long,

and I am full of tossing till the dawn.

⁵My flesh is clothed with worms and dirt;

my skin hardens, then breaks out afresh.

⁶My 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.

⁸The eye of him who sees me will behold me no more;

while thy eyes are upon me, I shall be gone.

⁹As the cloud fades and vanishes,

so he who goes down to Sheol does not come up;

¹⁰he returns no more to his house,

nor does his place know him 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.

¹²Am I the sea, or a sea monster,

that thou settest a guard over me?

¹³When I say, ‘My bed will comfort me,

my couch will ease my complaint,’

¹⁴then thou dost scare me with dreams

and terrify me with visions,

¹⁵so that I would choose strangling

and death rather than my bones.

¹⁶I loathe my life; I would not live for ever.

Let me alone, for my days are a breath.

¹⁷What is man, that thou dost make so much of him,

and that thou dost set thy mind upon him,

¹⁸dost visit him every morning,

and test him every moment?

¹⁹How long wilt thou not look away from me,

nor let me alone till I swallow my spittle?

²⁰If I sin, what do I do to thee, thou watcher of men?

Why hast thou made me thy mark?

Why have I become a burden to thee?

²¹Why dost thou not pardon my transgression

and take away my iniquity?

For now I shall lie in the earth;

thou wilt seek me, but I shall not be.”