Job, taking liberty of complaint, expostulates with God about his afflictions.

10:1 “My soul is weary of my life.
I will give free course to my complaint.
I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.

10:2 I will tell God,

‘Do not condemn me.
Show me why you contend with me.

10:3 Is it good to you that you should oppress,
that you should despise the work of your hands,
and smile on the counsel of the wicked?

10:4 Do you have eyes of flesh?
Or do you see as man sees?

10:5 Are your days as the days of mortals,
or your years as man’s years,

10:6 that you inquire after my iniquity,
and search after my sin?

10:7 Although you know that I am not wicked,
there is no one who can deliver out of your hand.

10:8 “‘Your hands have framed me and fashioned me altogether,
yet you destroy me.

10:9 Remember, I beg you, that you have fashioned me as clay.
Will you bring me into dust again?

10:10 Haven’t you poured me out like milk,
and curdled me like cheese?

10:11 You have clothed me with skin and flesh,
and knit me together with bones and sinews.

10:12 You have granted me life and loving kindness.
Your visitation has preserved my spirit.

10:13 Yet you hid these things in your heart.
I know that this is with you:

10:14 if I sin, then you mark me.
You will not acquit me from my iniquity.

10:15 If I am wicked, woe to me.
If I am righteous, I still shall not lift up my head,
being filled with disgrace,
and conscious of my affliction.

10:16 If my head is held high, you hunt me like a lion.
Again you show yourself powerful to me.

10:17 You renew your witnesses against me,
and increase your indignation on me.
Changes and warfare are with me.

He complains of life, and craves a little ease before death.

10:18 “‘Why, then, have you brought me forth out of the womb?
I wish I had given up the spirit, and no eye had seen me.

10:19 I should have been as though I had not been.
I should have been carried from the womb to the grave.

10:20 Aren’t my days few?
Cease then.
Leave me alone, that I may find a little comfort,

10:21 before I go where I shall not return from,
to the land of darkness and of the shadow of death;

10:22 the land dark as midnight,
of the shadow of death,
without any order,
where the light is as midnight.’”