Job 7:1-18 ▼

1 “Has not man a hard service on earth, and are not his days like the days of a hired hand?

2 Like a slave who longs for the shadow, and like a hired hand who looks for his 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 arise?’ But the night is long, and I am full of tossing till the dawn.

5 My flesh is clothed with worms and dirt; my skin hardens, then breaks out afresh.

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

7 “Remember that my life is a breath; my eye will never again see good.

8 The eye of him who sees me will behold me no more; while your eyes are on me, I shall be gone.

9 As the cloud fades and vanishes, so he who goes down to Sheol does not come up;

10 he returns no more to his house, nor does his place know him anymore.

11 “Therefore I will not restrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.

12 Am I the sea, or a sea monster, that you set a guard over me?

13 When I say, ‘My bed will comfort me, my couch will ease my complaint,’

14 then you scare me with dreams and terrify me with visions,

15 so that I would choose strangling and death rather than my bones.

16 I loathe my life; I would not live forever. Leave me alone, for my days are a breath.

17 What is man, that you make so much of him, and that you set your heart on him,

18 visit him every morning and test him every moment?