1My soul is weary of my life. I will let my complaint run free; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.
2I will say to God, "Do not condemn me; show me why you fight against me."
3Is it good to you to crush me, to despise the work of your own hands, and to shine on the plans of the wicked?
4Do you have eyes of flesh? Do you see as a man sees?
5Are your days like the days of a man? Are your years like a man's days,
6that you look into my wrongdoing, and search out my sin?
7You know that I am not wicked, and there is no one who can rescue anyone out of your hand.
8Your hands made me and shaped me, all of me together; yet now you destroy me.
9Remember, I beg you, that you made me like clay. Will you turn me back into dust?
10Did you not pour me out like milk, and curdle me like cheese?
11You clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews.
12You have given me life and favour, and your care has kept my spirit alive.
13Yet these things you hid in your heart. I know that this was your purpose.
14If I sin, then you watch me, and you will not clear me of my wrongdoing.
15If I am wicked, how terrible for me. And if I am righteous, still I will not lift up my head. I am full of confusion; so look at my suffering,
16for it grows greater. You hunt me like a fierce lion, and again you show your terrible power against me.
17You bring fresh witnesses against me, and increase your anger toward me; changes and war come against me.
18Why then did you bring me out of the womb? If only I had died, and no eye had ever seen me.
19I should have been as if I had never been. I should have been carried from the womb to the grave.
20Are not my days few? Stop, then, and leave me alone, so that I may have a little comfort,
21before I go to the place from which I shall not return, to the land of darkness and the shadow of death;
22a land of gloom, dark as darkness itself, a land of the shadow of death, with no order, where the light is like darkness.