10:1
Since I have lost all taste for life, I shall give free rein to my complaining; I shall let my embittered soul speak out.
10:2
I shall say to God, 'Do not condemn me, tell me what your case is against me.
10:3
Is it right for you to attack me, in contempt for what you yourself have made, thus abetting the schemes of the wicked?
10:4
Are your eyes mere human eyes, do you see as human beings see?
10:5
Are you mortal like human beings? do your years pass as human days pass?
10:6
You, who enquire into my faults and investigate my sins,
10:7
you know very well that I am innocent, and that no one can rescue me from your grasp.
10:8
Your hands having shaped and created me, now you change your mind and mean to destroy me!
10:9
Having made me, remember, as though of clay, now you mean to turn me back into dust!
10:10
Did you not pour me out like milk, and then let me thicken like curds,
10:11
clothe me with skin and flesh, and weave me of bone and sinew?
10:12
In your love you gave me life, and in your care watched over my every breath.
10:13
Yet, all the while, you had a secret plan: I know that you were biding your time
10:14
to see if I should sin and then not acquit me of my faults.
10:15
Woe to me, if I am guilty; even if I am upright, I dare not lift my head, so overwhelmed with shame and drunk with pain am I!
10:16
Proud as a lion, you hunt me down, multiplying your exploits at my expense,
10:17
attacking me again and again, your fury against me ever increasing, your troops assailing me, wave after wave.
10:18
Why did you bring me out of the womb? I should have perished then, unseen by any eye,
10:19
a being that had never been, to be carried from womb to grave.
10:20
The days of my life are few enough: turn your eyes away, leave me a little joy,
10:21
before I go to the place of no return, to the land of darkness and shadow dark as death,
10:22
where dimness and disorder hold sway, and light itself is like dead of night.
Previous
Next