Job Replies: There Is No Mediator

9Then Job answered:

Job: I Loathe My Life

10‘I loathe my life;
   I will give free utterance to my complaint;
   I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.
²I will say to God, Do not condemn me;
   let me know why you contend against me.
³Does it seem good to you to oppress,
   to despise the work of your hands
   and favour the schemes of the wicked?
⁴Do you have eyes of flesh?
   Do you see as humans see?
⁵Are your days like the days of mortals,
   or your years like human years,
⁶that you seek out my iniquity
   and search for my sin,
⁷although you know that I am not guilty,
   and there is no one to deliver out of your hand?
⁸Your hands fashioned and made me;
   and now you turn and destroy me.^*
9Remember that you fashioned me like clay;
   and will you turn me to dust again?
¹⁶Bold as a lion you hunt me;
   you repeat your exploits against me.
¹⁷You renew your witnesses against me,
   and increase your vexation towards me;
   you bring fresh troops against me.^*

¹⁸‘Why did you bring me forth from the womb?
   Would that I had died before any eye had seen me,
¹⁹and were as though I had not been,
   carried from the womb to the grave.
²⁰Are not the days of my life few?^*
   Let me alone, that I may find a little comfort^*
21before I go, never to return,
   to the land of gloom and deep darkness,
²²the land of gloom^* and chaos,
   where light is like darkness.’