Job 7

¹Has not man his ordered time of trouble on the earth? and are not his days like the days of a servant working for payment?

²As a servant desiring the shades of evening, and a workman looking for his payment:

³So I have for my heritage months of pain to no purpose, and nights of weariness are given to me.

⁴When I go to my bed, I say, When will it be time to get up? but the night is long, and I am turning from side to side till morning light.

⁵My flesh is covered with worms and dust; my skin gets hard and then is cracked again.

⁶My days go quicker than the cloth-worker's thread, and come to an end without hope.

⁷O, keep in mind that my life is wind: my eye will never again see good.

⁸The eye of him who sees me will see me no longer: your eyes will be looking for me, but I will be gone.

⁹A cloud comes to an end and is gone; so he who goes down into the underworld comes not up again.

¹⁰He will not come back to his house, and his place will have no more knowledge of him.

¹¹So I will not keep my mouth shut; I will let the words come from it in the pain of my spirit, my soul will make a bitter outcry.

¹²Am I a sea, or a sea-beast, that you put a watch over me?

¹³When I say, In my bed I will have comfort, there I will get rest from my disease;

¹⁴Then you send dreams to me, and visions of fear;

¹⁵So that a hard death seems better to my soul than my pains.