1: "My soul is weary of my life. I will give free course to my complaint. I will speak in the bitterness of my soul. 2: I will tell God, 'Do not condemn me. Show me why you contend with me. 3: Is it good to you that you should oppress, that you should despise the work of your hands, and smile on the counsel of the wicked? 4: Do you have eyes of flesh? Or do you see as man sees? 5: Are your days as the days of mortals, or your years as man's years, 6: that you inquire after my iniquity, and search after my sin? 7: Although you know that I am not wicked, there is no one who can deliver out of your hand. 8: "'Your hands have framed me and fashioned me altogether, yet you destroy me. 9: Remember, I beg you, that you have fashioned me as clay. Will you bring me into dust again? 10: Haven't you poured me out like milk, and curdled me like cheese? 11: You have clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews. 12: You have granted me life and loving kindness. Your visitation has preserved my spirit. 13: Yet you hid these things in your heart. I know that this is with you: 14: if I sin, then you mark me. You will not acquit me from my iniquity. 15: If I am wicked, woe to me. If I am righteous, I still shall not lift up my head, being filled with disgrace, and conscious of my affliction. 16: If my head is held high, you hunt me like a lion. Again you show yourself powerful to me. 17: You renew your witnesses against me, and increase your indignation on me. Changes and warfare are with me. 18: "'Why, then, have you brought me forth out of the womb? I wish I had given up the spirit, and no eye had seen me. 19: I should have been as though I had not been. I should have been carried from the womb to the grave. 20: Aren't my days few? Cease then. Leave me alone, that I may find a little comfort, 21: before I go where I shall not return from, to the land of darkness and of the shadow of death; 22: the land dark as midnight, of the shadow of death, without any order, where the light is as midnight.'"