Job Continues: Life Seems Futile

1“ Is there not hard service for man on earth?

Are his days like the days of a hireling?

2As a servant longs for shade,

and as a hireling awaits his wages,

3so are allotted to me months of emptiness,

and nights of toil are appointed to me.

4When I lie down, then I say,

‘When shall I arise?’

But the night is measured out,

and I am full of tossings until dawn.

5My flesh is clothed with worm and clod of the dust;

my skin breaks and festers.

6My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle;

and they end without hope.

7Remember that my life is a breath;

my eye shall not return to see good.

8The eye of the one seeing me shall not behold me;

your eyes are on me, and I will be no more.

9As a cloud is consumed and goes away,

so the one going down to Sheol does not ascend.

10He shall not return again to his house,

nor shall his place recognize him anymore.

11So I will not restrain my mouth;

I will speak in the distress of my spirit;

I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.

12Am I a sea or the sea monster,

that You would set a guard over me?

13When I say, My bed will comfort me,

my couch will lift my complaint,

14then You shatter me with dreams

and terrify me with visions,

15so that my soul would choose strangling and death

rather than my bones.

16I loathe—I would not live forever!

Cease from me, for my days are vapor.

17What is man that You should magnify him,

and that You would set Your heart toward him,

18that You attend to him in the mornings;

in the moments You will test him?

19How long will You not look away from me?

Will You not leave me alone until I swallow my spittle?

20If I have sinned, what have I done to You,

O watcher of mankind?

Why have You set me to be a target for You

and why should I be a burden to You?†

21And why do You not lift my transgression

and make my iniquity pass away?

For now in the dust I shall lie down,

and You will seek me, and I will not be there.”