Job
2 I will say to God ‘Do not declare me guilty,
let me know what you are prosecuting me for.
3 Does it do you good to deny justice,
to repudiate what your hands have toiled on
and beam upon the policy of wrong-doers?
4 Do you have a mortal’s eyes
or see as mankind sees,
5 Are your days like a human being’s days
or your years like a man’s days,
6 That you hunt up my guilt
and make a search for my sin,
7* Notwithstanding your knowledge that I shall not prove to be doing wrong
and there is nobody to deliver out of your hands?
8 Your hands molded me and made me;
afterward you swing round and wipe me out.
9 Remember that you made me in clay
and are putting me back in the loam.
10 Did you not pour me like milk
and curdle me like cheese,
11 Clothe me with skin and flesh
and frame me with bones and sinews,
13 And you had these things hidden in your heart;
I know you have had this in mind.
14 If I sinned you would watch me
and not acquit me of my guilt;
15* If I did wrong, woe to me;
or right, I should not lift up my head,
Eating my fill of indignities
and drinking my fill of misery,
16* Or if I bridled up you would hunt me like a lion
and come back to your mysterious dealings with me,
17* Confront me with new witnesses
and multiply your grievances against me,
mobilize fresh divisions against me.
18 And why did you bring me out of a womb?
I should have perished and no eye have seen me,
19 Been as if I had not existed,
been taken from mother’s body to grave.
20 Is not my lifetime small? leave off,
glance away from me and let me brighten up a little
21 Before I go, never to return,
to a land of darkness and gloom,