I will give myself up to complaint;
    I will speak from the bitterness of my soul.
² I will say to God: Do not put me in the wrong!
    Let me know why you oppose me.
^3 [a]Is it a pleasure for you to oppress,
    to spurn the work of your hands,
    and shine on the plan of the wicked?
⁴ Have you eyes of flesh?
    Do you see as mortals see?
⁵ Are your days like the days of a mortal,^(A)
    and are your years like a human lifetime,
⁶ That you seek for guilt in me
    and search after my sins,
⁷ Even though you know that I am not wicked,^(B)
    and that none can deliver me out of your hand?
⁸ Your hands have formed me and fashioned me;
    will you then turn and destroy me?
⁹ Oh, remember that you fashioned me from clay!^(C)
    Will you then bring me down to dust again?
¹⁰ Did you not pour me out like milk,
    and thicken me like cheese?
¹¹ With skin and flesh you clothed me,
    with bones and sinews knit me together.
¹² Life and love you granted me,
    and your providence has preserved my spirit.
¹³ Yet these things you have hidden in your heart;
    I know they are your purpose:
¹⁴ If I should sin, you would keep a watch on me,
    and from my guilt you would not absolve me.
¹⁵ If I should be wicked, alas for me!
    even if righteous, I dare not hold up my head,
    sated with shame, drenched in affliction!
¹⁶ Should it lift up, you hunt me like a lion:
    repeatedly you show your wondrous power against me,
¹⁷ You renew your attack^[b] upon me
    and multiply your harassment of me;
    in waves your troops come against me.
¹⁸ Why then did you bring me forth from the womb?^(D)
    I should have died and no eye have seen me.
¹⁹ I should be as though I had never lived;
    I should have been taken from the womb to the grave.
²⁰ Are not my days few? Stop!
    Let me alone, that I may recover a little
²¹ Before I go whence I shall not return,^(E)
    to the land of darkness and of gloom,
²² The dark, disordered land
    where darkness is the only light.