²⁵ My days are swifter than a runner.
They fly away without bringing any happiness.
²⁶ They glide by like reed boats,
like an eagle that swoops down on its prey.
²⁷ If I say, “I will forget my complaint.
I will put on a happy face and smile,”
²⁸ even then I dread all my pain,
because I know that you will not acquit me.
²⁹ I have already been declared guilty,
so why should I struggle for nothing.
³⁰ If I wash myself with snow,
if I cleanse my hands with strong soap,
³¹ then you will plunge me into a cesspool,
and my clothes will detest me.
³² For he is not a man as I am,
so that I am able to answer him,
so that we may meet in court.
³³ There is no one to mediate ^[1] between us,
no one who can lay his hand on both of us.
³⁴ No one can make him take his rod away from me,
so that the dread of him would not fill me with terror!
³⁵ If that happened, I would speak up and not be afraid.
But I have no such mediator. I am left on my own.

Job 10

¹ With all my heart I am weary of my life,
so I will express my complaint freely.
I will speak from the bitterness of my heart.
² I will say this to God: Do not condemn me.
Tell me why you are pressing charges against me.
³ Is it good that you are oppressing me,
that you are rejecting what your hands have made,
at the same time that you favor the plans of the wicked?
⁴ Do you have eyes made of flesh?
Do you see things the way a man does?
⁵ Are your days like a man’s days?
Are your years like the life span of a human?

⁶ You do, in fact, investigate guilt,
and you do search carefully for sin.
⁷ Although you know that I am not guilty,
there is no one who can rescue me from your hand.

⁸ Your hands shaped me and made me,
but now you swallow me up completely.
⁹ Please remember that it was you who shaped me like a clay pot.
Will you now return me to the dust?
¹⁰ Aren’t you the one who poured me out like milk,
who thickened me like a curd of cheese?
¹¹ You clothed me with skin and flesh.
You wove me together with bones and tendons.
¹² You provided me with life and mercy,
and your watchful care has guarded my spirit.

¹³ You hid these things in your heart,
but I know that this is what you had in mind:
¹⁴ If I sinned and you were watching me,
you would not acquit me of my guilt.
¹⁵ If I was wicked, I would be cursed!
But even if I was righteous, I could not lift up my head,
because I am filled with shame and aware of ^[2] my misery.
¹⁶ If I lift myself up, ^[3] you hunt me down like a lion.
You turn and display amazing power against me.
¹⁷ You produce new witnesses to oppose me,
and you become more irritated with me.
You attack me with reinforcements.
¹⁸ Why, then, did you bring me out from the womb?
I wish I had died. Then no eye would have seen me.
¹⁹ I wish I had been like someone who never lived.
Then I would have been carried from the womb to the tomb.
²⁰ Don’t I have only a few days?
Stop! Leave me alone, so that I can be happy for a short time,
²¹ before I walk into the land of darkness
and into the shadow of death, never to return,
²² into the land of gloom, as dark as the shadow of death,
into the land of chaos, where even light is darkness.