Job's Desperate Plea for Understanding

"I loathe my very life; therefore I will give free rein to my complaint and speak out in the bitterness of my soul. 

I will say to God: Do not condemn me, but tell me what charges you have against me.

Does it please you to oppress me, to spurn the work of your hands, while you smile on the schemes of the wicked?

Do you have eyes of flesh? Do you see as a mortal sees?

Are your days like those of a mortal or your years like those of a man,

that you must search out my faults and probe after my sin-

though you know that I am not guilty and that no one can rescue me from your hand?

"Your hands shaped me and made me. Will you now turn and destroy me?

Remember that you molded me like clay. Will you now turn me to dust again?

Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese,

clothe me with skin and flesh and knit me together with bones and sinews?

You gave me life and showed me kindness, and in your providence watched over my spirit.

"But this is what you concealed in your heart, and I know that this was in your mind:

If I sinned, you would be watching me and would not let my offense go unpunished.

If I am guilty-woe to me! Even if I am innocent, I cannot lift my head, for I am full of shame and drowned in my affliction.

If I hold my head high, you stalk me like a lion and again display your awesome power against me.

You bring new witnesses against me and increase your anger toward me; your forces come against me wave upon wave.

"Why then did you bring me out of the womb? I wish I had died before any eye saw me.

If only I had never come into being, or had been carried straight from the womb to the grave!

Are not my few days almost over? Turn away from me so I can have a moment's joy

before I go to the place of no return, to the land of gloom and deep shadow,

to the land of deepest night, of deep shadow and disorder, where even the light is like darkness."

Key Passages