Job 7

1 “Is a man’s life on earth not one long test,

his life like that of a worker hired by the day?

2 Like a servant afraid of his master, who has just got into the shade,

or like a hired worker waiting for his wages —

3 so I too have gone through empty months,

and nights of pain have been handed to me.

4 When I lie down I say, ‘When will it be day?’

And when I get up, again, ‘When will it be evening?’

I am full of pain from evening until morning.

5 My body is a mess of rot and worms;

I break up clods of earth as I scrape the discharge away.

6 My life is lighter than a spoken word,

and it has been lost in an empty hope.

7 Remember, then, that my life is breath,

and my eye will not come back again to see anything good.

8 The eye that sees me now will not look at me again.

Your eyes are on me, and I am gone,

9 like a cloud swept clear off the sky.

For if a man goes down to Hades, he does not come up again;

10 he will never return to his own house,

and his own place will not know him any more.

11 So I will not spare my own mouth either.

I will speak, because I am in distress;

I will open up the bitterness of my soul, since it has hold of me.

12 Am I the sea, or a serpent,

that you have set a guard over me?

13 I said, ‘My bed will comfort me,’

and, ‘I will take my thoughts to myself, alone on my couch.’

14 You frighten me with dreams

and stun me with visions.

15 You will part my soul from my breath,

and my bones from death.

16 I will not live forever, that I should be patient.

Leave me alone — my life is empty.

17 What is a man, that you have made so much of him,

that you turn your mind toward him,

18 that you come to look him over until morning

and judge him at his hour of rest?

19 How long will you not let me be, or let me go —

long enough to swallow my own spit in pain?

20 If I have sinned, what can I do to you,

you who know the mind of human beings?

Why have you made me the one who brings the case against you?

Why am I a burden to you?

21 And why have you not made my lawlessness forgotten

and washed my sin away?

Now I will go off into the earth,

and when morning comes I will be no more.”