1 "Does not man have a term of hard service on earth, and are not his days like a hireling's days?
2 As a slave pants for the shade and a hireling looks for his pay,
3 so I have been made to inherit months of emptiness, and nights of trouble have been counted out to me.
4 If I lie down, I say, 'When will I get up?' But the night is long, and I have my fill of tossing till twilight.
5 My flesh is clothed with maggots and clods of dust; my skin crusts over and festers again.
6 My days go faster than a weaver's shuttle, and they are spent without hope.
7 Remember, my life is but wind; my eye will not see good again.
8 The eye that sees me now will see me no longer; your eyes will look for me, and I will not be there.
9 A cloud fades and goes; so one who goes down to Sheol does not come back up.
10 He will not return to his house again, and his place will no longer know him.
11 So I, for my part, will not hold back my mouth; in the distress of my spirit I will speak, in my soul's bitterness I will complain.
12 Am I the sea, or a sea dragon, that you post a watch over me?
13 When I think, 'My bed will console me, my couch will share the load of my complaint,'
14 then you scare me with dreams and terrify me through visions,
15 and my soul prefers strangling, death rather than these bones.
16 I loathe it; I would not live forever. Leave me be, for my days are a vapor.
17 What is man, that you make so much of him, and that you set your heart on him,
18 that you inspect him every morning and put him to the test every moment?
19 How long until you look away from me, and leave me alone long enough to swallow my spit?
20 Have I sinned? What do I do to you, you watcher of mankind? Why have you set me up as your mark, so that I have become a burden to myself?
21 And why do you not forgive my transgression and pass over my iniquity? For soon I will lie down in the dust; you will search for me, and I will be gone."