1“My being has grown weary of life. I let loose my complaint, I speak in the bitterness of my being.

2I say to Eloah, ‘Do not declare me wrong, show me why You strive with me.

3Is it good to You that You should crush, that You should despise the work of Your hands, and shine on the counsel of the wrong?

4Do You have eyes of flesh? Do You see as man sees?

5Are Your days like the days of a mortal man? Are Your years like the days of a mighty man,

6that You should seek for my crookedness and search out my sin?

7For You know that I am not wrong, and there is no one to deliver from Your hand.

8Your hands have made me and shaped me, together all around, yet You destroy me.

9Remember, please, that You have made me like clay. And would You turn me into dust again?

10Did You not pour me out like milk, and curdle me like cheese?

11Skin and flesh you put on me, and wove me with bones and sinews.

12Life and kindness You have bestowed on me, and Your visitation has preserved my spirit.

13And these You have laid up in Your heart, I know that this was with You:

14If I sin, then You watch me, and let no crookedness of mine go unpunished.

15If I am wrong, woe to me! And if I am righteous, I would not lift up my head – filled with shame and seeing my grief!

16If I lift it up high, you hunt me as a lion, and again You would show Yourself marvellous against me.

17You renew Your witnesses against me, and increase Your vexation toward me; changes and a host are with me.

18So why have You brought me forth from the womb? Oh, that I had perished and no eye had seen me!

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

20Are not my days few? Then cease! Leave me alone, so that I brighten up a little,

21Before I go, and not return, to the land of darkness and the shadow of death,

22a land as dark as darkness itself, as the shadow of death, without any order, whose light is as darkness.”