7 ‘Do not human beings have a hard service on earth,
    and are not their days like the days of a labourer?
² Like a slave who longs for the shadow,
    and like labourers who look for their wages,
³ so I am allotted months of emptiness,
    and nights of misery are apportioned to me.
⁴ When I lie down I say, “When shall I rise?”
    But the night is long,
    and I am full of tossing until dawn.

⁶ My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle,
    and come to their end without hope.^[a]