Job

Chapter 10

  1. 1

    Oh, I am weary of life; I will speak out, come what may; my soul is too embit-tered for silence.

  2. 2

    I will protest against God’s sentence, demand to know why his judgement is so cruel.

  3. 3

    Is it well done in thee to play the tyrant, to spurn me, the creature of thy own hands, to smile on the ill designs of the godless?

  4. 4

    Are those eyes of thine human after all; is thy sight, too, blinded, like the sight of men?

  5. 5

    Hast thou a mortal’s span of life, a destiny brief as ours,

  6. 6

    that thou must search for faults in me, labour to convict me of wrong done,

  7. 7

    when thou knowest full well that I am innocent, knowest that I am in thy power beyond hope of rescue?

  8. 8

    It was thy hand that made me, no part of me but is thy fashioning; and wilt thou cast me aside all in a moment?

  9. 9

    Thou the craftsman, though of clay thy handiwork, and must all be ground to dust again?

  10. 10

    Milk of thy milking, cheese of thy pressing,

  11. 11

    were flesh and skin that clothed me, bone and sinew that built up my frame;

  12. 12

    the life given by thee, by thee was spared; thy vigilance was all my safety.

  13. 13

    Only in thy heart the memory of this is stored, but I know thou hast not forgotten.

  14. 14

    And was it thy purpose to spare me for a little, if I sinned, but absolve me never?

  15. 15

    Woe to me, if I rebelled against thee! And if I remained innocent, what then? Why, I would be drowned in misery and despair till I could lift up my head no more!

  16. 16

    Or if I did, that were pride in me, to be hunted down as a lioness is hunted; thou wouldst devise fresh miracles of torment;

  17. 17

    wouldst bring fresh witnesses against me, redouble thy avenging strokes, array against me a new host of punishments.

  18. 18

    Why didst thou ever take me from the womb; why could I not perish there, never to meet men’s eyes;

  19. 19

    a being without being, carried from womb to tomb?

  20. 20

    Brief, brief is my span of days; for a little leave me to myself, to find some comfort in my misery.

  21. 21

    Soon I must go to a land whence there is no returning, a land of darkness, death’s shadow over it;

  22. 22

    a land of gloomy night, where death’s shadow lies over all, and no peace haunts it, only everlasting dread.