10 “I am weary of living. Let me complain freely. I will speak in my sorrow and bitterness. ² I will say to God, ‘Don’t just condemn me—tell me why you are doing it. ³ Does it really seem right to you to oppress and despise me, a man you have made; and to send joy and prosperity to the wicked? ^4-7 Are you unjust^[a] like men? Is your life so short that you must hound me for sins you know full well I’ve not committed? Is it because you know no one can save me from your hand?

⁸ “‘You have made me, and yet you destroy me. ⁹ Oh, please remember that I’m made of dust—will you change me back again to dust so soon? ¹⁰ You have already poured me from bottle to bottle like milk and curdled me like cheese. ¹¹ You gave me skin and flesh and knit together bones and sinews. ¹² You gave me life and were so kind and loving to me, and I was preserved by your care.

^13-14 “‘Yet all the time your real motive in making me was to destroy me if I sinned, and to refuse to forgive my iniquity. ¹⁵ Just the slightest wickedness, and I am done for. And if I’m good, that doesn’t count. I am filled with frustration. ¹⁶ If I start to get up off the ground, you leap upon me like a lion and quickly finish me off. ¹⁷ Again and again you witness against me and pour out an ever-increasing volume of wrath upon me and bring fresh armies against me.

¹⁸ “‘Why then did you even let me be born? Why didn’t you let me die at birth? ¹⁹ Then I would have been spared this miserable existence. I would have gone directly from the womb to the grave. ^20-21 Can’t you see how little time I have left? Oh, leave me alone that I may have a little moment of comfort before I leave for the land of darkness and the shadow of death, never to return— ²² a land as dark as midnight, a land of the shadow of death where only confusion reigns and where the brightest light is dark as midnight.’”