2.1 KiB
Job Frames His Plea to God
Chapter 10
- "I am disgusted with my life.
Let me complain freely.
My bitter soul must complain.
- I will say to God, 'Don't simply condemn me--
tell me the charge you are bringing against me.
- What do you gain by oppressing me?
Why do you reject me, the work of your own hands,
while smiling on the schemes of the wicked?
- Are your eyes like those of a human?
Do you see things only as people see them?
- Is your lifetime only as long as ours?
Is your life so short
- that you must quickly probe for my guilt
and search for my sin?
- Although you know I am not guilty,
no one can rescue me from your hands.
- "'You formed me with your hands; you made me,
yet now you completely destroy me.
- Remember that you made me from dust--
will you turn me back to dust so soon?
-
You guided my conception and formed me in the womb.
-
You clothed me with skin and flesh,
and you knit my bones and sinews together.
- You gave me life and showed me your unfailing love.
My life was preserved by your care.
- "'Yet your real motive--
your true intent--
- was to watch me, and if I sinned,
you would not forgive my guilt.
- If I am guilty, too bad for me;
and even if I'm innocent, I can't hold my head high,
because I am filled with shame and misery.
- And if I hold my head high, you hunt me like a lion
and display your awesome power against me.
- Again and again you witness against me.
You pour out your growing anger on me
and bring fresh armies against me.
- "'Why, then, did you deliver me from my mother's womb?
Why didn't you let me die at birth?
- It would be as though I had never existed,
going directly from the womb to the grave.
- I have only a few days left, so leave me alone,
that I may have a moment of comfort
- before I leave--never to return--
for the land of darkness and utter gloom.
- It is a land as dark as midnight,
a land of gloom and confusion,
where even the light is dark as midnight.'"