Job's Plea to God

1“My soul is weary of my life. I will give free course to my complaint. I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.

2I will tell God, ‘Do not condemn me. Show me why you contend with me.

3Is it good to you that you should oppress, that you should despise the work of your hands, and smile on the counsel of the wicked?

4Do you have eyes of flesh? Or do you see as man sees?

5Are your days as the days of mortals, or your years as man’s years,

6that you inquire after my iniquity, and search after my sin?

7Although you know that I am not wicked, there is no one who can deliver out of your hand.

8“‘Your hands have framed me and fashioned me altogether, yet you destroy me.

9Remember, I beg you, that you have fashioned me as clay. Will you bring me into dust again?

10Haven’t you poured me out like milk, and curdled me like cheese?

11You have clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews.

12You have granted me life and loving kindness. Your visitation has preserved my spirit.

13Yet you hid these things in your heart. I know that this is with you:

14if I sin, then you mark me. You will not acquit me from my iniquity.

15If I am wicked, woe to me. If I am righteous, I still will not lift up my head, being filled with disgrace, and conscious of my affliction.

16If my head is held high, you hunt me like a lion. Again you show yourself powerful to me.

17You renew your witnesses against me, and increase your indignation on me. Changes and warfare are with me.

18“‘Why, then, have you brought me out of the womb? I wish I had given up the spirit, and no eye had seen me.

19I should have been as though I had not been. I should have been carried from the womb to the grave.

20Aren’t my days few? Stop! Leave me alone, that I may find a little comfort,

21before I go where I will not return from, to the land of darkness and of the shadow of death;

22the land dark as midnight, of the shadow of death, without any order, where the light is as midnight.’”