1I am sickened of life; I shall give free rein to my complaints, speaking out in the bitterness of my soul.
2I shall say to God, Do not condemn me, but let me know the charge against me.
3Do you find any advantage in oppression, in spurning the work of your own hands while smiling on the policy of the wicked?
4Have you the eyes of flesh? Do you see as a mortal sees?
5Are your days as those of a mortal or your years as his lifespan?
6Is that why you look for guilt in me and seek in me for sin,
7though you know that I am guiltless and have none to save me from your power?
8Your hands shaped and fashioned me; and will you at once turn and destroy me?
9Recall that you moulded me like clay; and would you reduce me to dust again?
10Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese,
11clothe me with skin and flesh and knit me together with bones and sinews?
12You granted me life and continuing favour, and your providence watched over my spirit.
13Yet this was the secret purpose of your heart, and I know what was your intent:
14that, if I sinned, you would be watching me and would not absolve me of my guilt.
15If indeed I am wicked, all the worse for me! If I am upright, I cannot hold up my head; I am filled with shame and steeped in my affliction.
16If I am proud as a lion, you hunt me down and confront me again with marvellous power;
17you renew your onslaught on me, and with mounting anger against me bring fresh forces to the attack.
18Why did you bring me out of the womb? Better if I had expired and no one had set eyes on me,
19if I had been carried from womb to grave and were as though I had not been born.
20Is not my life short and fleeting? Let me be, that I may be happy for a moment,
21before I depart to a land of gloom, a land of deepest darkness, never to return,
22a land of dense darkness and disorder, increasing darkness lit by no ray of light.