NRSV Job 7 Chapter
7:1
"Do not human beings have a hard service on earth, and are not their days like the days of a laborer?
7:2
Like a slave who longs for the shadow, and like laborers who look for their wages,
7:3
so I am allotted months of emptiness, and nights of misery are apportioned to me.
7:4
When I lie down I say, 'When shall I rise?' But the night is long, and I am full of tossing until dawn.
7:5
My flesh is clothed with worms and dirt; my skin hardens, then breaks out again.
7:6
My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle, and come to their end without hope.
7:7
"Remember that my life is a breath; my eye will never again see good.
7:8
The eye that beholds me will see me no more; while your eyes are upon me, I shall be gone.
7:9
As the cloud fades and vanishes, so those who go down to Sheol do not come up;
7:10
they return no more to their houses, nor do their places know them any more.
7:11
"Therefore I will not restrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.
7:12
Am I the Sea, or the Dragon, that you set a guard over me?
7:13
When I say, 'My bed will comfort me, my couch will ease my complaint,'
7:14
then you scare me with dreams and terrify me with visions,
7:15
so that I would choose strangling and death rather than this body.
7:16
I loathe my life; I would not live forever. Let me alone, for my days are a breath.
7:17
What are human beings, that you make so much of them, that you set your mind on them,
7:18
visit them every morning, test them every moment?
7:19
Will you not look away from me for a while, let me alone until I swallow my spittle?
7:20
If I sin, what do I do to you, you watcher of humanity? Why have you made me your target? Why have I become a burden to you?
7:21
Why do you not pardon my transgression and take away my iniquity? For now I shall lie in the earth; you will seek me, but I shall not be."