Job 7

Job Continues: My Life Has No Hope

¹“Has not man a hard service on earth,[#14:14; Isa. 40:2]

and are not his days like the days of a hired hand?

²Like a slave who longs for the shadow,[#Song 2:17; 4:6; Jer. 6:4]

and like a hired hand who looks for his wages,

³so I am allotted months of emptiness,[#16]

and nights of misery are apportioned to me.

⁴When I lie down I say, ‘When shall I arise?’[#Deut. 28:67]

But the night is long,

and I am full of tossing till the dawn.

⁵My flesh is clothed with worms and dirt;[#Isa. 14:11; #2:8]

my skin hardens, then breaks out afresh.

⁶My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle[#9:25; #Isa. 38:12]

and come to their end without hope.

⁷“Remember that my life is a breath;[#6:26; Ps. 78:39]

my eye will never again see good.

⁸The eye of him who sees me will behold me no more;[#20:9; 8:18; Ps. 37:36]

while your eyes are on me, I shall be gone.

⁹As the cloud fades and vanishes,[#30:15]

so he who goes down to Sheol does not come up;

¹⁰he returns no more to his house,[#10:21; 2 Sam. 12:23]

nor does his place know him anymore.

¹¹“Therefore I will not restrain my mouth;[#Ps. 40:9]

I will speak in the anguish of my spirit;

I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.

¹²Am I the sea, or a sea monster,[#Gen. 1:21]

that you set a guard over me?

¹³When I say, ‘My bed will comfort me,[#9:27]

my couch will ease my complaint,’

¹⁴then you scare me with dreams

and terrify me with visions,

¹⁵so that I would choose strangling

and death rather than my bones.

¹⁶I loathe my life; I would not live forever.[#9:21; 10:1]

Leave me alone, for my days are a breath.

¹⁷What is man, that you make so much of him,[#Ps. 8:4; 144:3; Heb. 2:6]

and that you set your heart on him,

¹⁸visit him every morning[#Ps. 17:3]

and test him every moment?

¹⁹How long will you not look away from me,[#14:6]

nor leave me alone till I swallow my spit?

²⁰If I sin, what do I do to you, you watcher of mankind?

Why have you made me your mark?

Why have I become a burden to you?

²¹Why do you not pardon my transgression

and take away my iniquity?

For now I shall lie in the earth;

you will seek me, but I shall not be.”