| 1. | I loathe my life. I will give myself up to complaint; I will speak from the bitterness of my soul. |
| 2. | I will say to God: Do not put me in the wrong! Let me know why you oppose me. |
| 3. | Is it a pleasure for you to oppress, to spurn the work of your hands, and smile on the plan of the wicked? |
| 4. | Have you eyes of flesh? Do you see as man sees? |
| 5. | Are your days as the days of a mortal, and are your years as a man's lifetime, |
| 6. | That you seek for guilt in me and search after my sins, |
| 7. | Even though you know that I am not wicked, and that none can deliver me out of your hand? |
| 8. | Your hands have formed me and fashioned me; will you then turn and destroy me? |
| 9. | Oh, remember that you fashioned me from clay! Will you then bring me down to dust again? |
| 10. | Did you not pour me out as milk, and thicken me like cheese? |
| 11. | With skin and flesh you clothed me, with bones and sinews knit me together. |
| 12. | Grace and favor you granted me, and your providence has preserved my spirit. |
| 13. | Yet these things you have hidden in your heart; I know that they are your purpose: |
| 14. | If I should sin, you would keep a watch against me, and from my guilt you would not absolve me. |
| 15. | If I should be wicked, alas for me! if righteous, I dare not hold up my head, filled with ignominy and sodden with affliction! |
| 16. | Should it lift up, you hunt me like a lion: repeatedly you show your wondrous power against me, |
| 17. | You renew your attack upon me and multiply your harassment of me; in waves your troops come against me. |
| 18. | Why then did you bring me forth from the womb? I should have died and no eye have seen me. |
| 19. | I should be as though I had never lived; I should have been taken from the womb to the grave. |
| 20. | Are not the days of my life few? Let me alone, that I may recover a little |
| 21. | Before I go whence I shall not return, to the land of darkness and of gloom, |
| 22. | The black, disordered land where darkness is the only light. |
