1Weary in my soul, I will pour my words with groans upon him: I will speak being straitened in the bitterness of my soul.

2And I will say to the Lord, Do not teach me to be impious; and therefore have you thus judged me?

3Is it good before you if I be unrighteous? for you have disowned the work of your hands, and attended to the counsel of the ungodly.

4Or do you see as a mortal sees? or will you look as a man sees?

5Or is your life human, or your years the years of a man,

6that you have enquired into my iniquity, and searched out my sins?

7For you know that I have not committed iniquity: but who is he that can deliver out of your hands?

8Your hands have formed me and made me; afterwards you did change your mind, and strike me.

9Remember that you have made me as clay, and you do turn me again to earth.

10Have you not poured me out like milk, and curdled me like cheese?

11And you did clothe me with skin and flesh, and frame me with bones and sinews.

12And you did bestow upon me life and mercy, and your oversight has preserved my spirit.

13Having these things in yourself, I know that you can do all things; for nothing is impossible with you.

14And if I should sin, you watch me; and you have not cleared me from iniquity.

15Or if I should be ungodly, woe is me: and if I should be righteous, I can’t lift myself up, for I am full of dishonor.

16For I am hunted like a lion for slaughter; for again you have changed and are terribly destroying me;

17renewing against me my torture: and you have dealt with me in great anger, and you have brought trials upon me.

18Why then did you bring me out of the womb? and why did I not die, and no eye see me,

19and I become as if I had not been? for why was I not carried from the womb to the grave?

20Is not the time of my life short? suffer me to rest a little,

21before I go whence I shall not return, to a land of darkness and gloominess;

22to a land of perpetual darkness, where there is no light, neither can any one see the life of mortals.