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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.
² I will say to God, Do not condemn me;
   let me know why you contend against me.
³ Does it seem good to you to oppress,
   to despise the work of your hands
   and favour the schemes of the wicked?
⁴ Do you have eyes of flesh?
   Do you see as humans see?
⁵ Are your days like the days of mortals,
   or your years like human years,
⁶ that you seek out my iniquity
   and search for my sin,
⁷ although you know that I am not guilty,
   and there is no one to deliver out of your hand?
⁸ Your hands fashioned and made me;
   and now you turn and destroy me.^*
9 Remember that you fashioned me like clay;
   and will you turn me to dust again?
¹⁰ Did you not pour me out like milk
   and curdle me like cheese?
¹¹ You clothed me with skin and flesh,
   and knit me together with bones and sinews.
¹² You have granted me life and steadfast love,
   and your care has preserved my spirit.
¹³ Yet these things you hid in your heart;
   I know that this was your purpose.
¹⁴ If I sin, you watch me,
   and do not acquit me of my iniquity.
¹⁵ If I am wicked, woe to me!
   If I am righteous, I cannot lift up my head,
for I am filled with disgrace
   and look upon my affliction.
¹⁶ Bold as a lion you hunt me;
   you repeat your exploits against me.
¹⁷ You 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,
¹⁹ and were as though I had not been,
   carried from the womb to the grave.
²⁰ Are not the days of my life few?^*
   Let me alone, that I may find a little comfort^*
21 before I go, never to return,
   to the land of gloom and deep darkness,
²² the land of gloom^* and chaos,
   where light is like darkness.’