Chapter text
World English Bible
Verse-by-verse text with stable anchors, canonical chapter URLs, and copyable verse links.
- 1 “Isn’t a man forced to labor on earth? Aren’t his days like the days of a hired hand?
- 2 As a servant who earnestly desires the shadow, as a hireling who looks for his wages,
- 3 so I am made to possess months of misery, wearisome nights are appointed to me.
- 4 When I lie down, I say, ‘When will I arise, and the night be gone?’ I toss and turn until the dawning of the day.
- 5 My flesh is clothed with worms and clods of dust. My skin closes up, and breaks out afresh.
- 6 My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and are spent without hope.
- 7 Oh remember that my life is a breath. My eye will no more see good.
- 8 The eye of him who sees me will see me no more. Your eyes will be on me, but I will not be.
- 9 As the cloud is consumed and vanishes away, so he who goes down to Sheol will come up no more.
- 10 He will return no more to his house, neither will his place know him any more.
- 11 “Therefore I will not keep silent. I will speak in the anguish of my spirit. I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.
- 12 Am I a sea, or a sea monster, that you put 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 through visions,
- 15 so that my soul chooses strangling, death rather than my bones.
- 16 I loathe my life. I don’t want to live forever. Leave me alone, for my days are but a breath.
- 17 What is man, that you should magnify him, that you should set your mind on him,
- 18 that you should visit him every morning, and test him every moment?
- 19 How long will you not look away from me, nor leave me alone until I swallow down my spittle?
- 20 If I have sinned, what do I do to you, you watcher of men? Why have you set me as a mark for you, so that I am a burden to myself?
- 21 Why do you not pardon my disobedience, and take away my iniquity? For now will I lie down in the dust. You will seek me diligently, but I will not be.”