Job

¹ -I'm putting it all out on the table, all the bitterness of my life—I'm holding back nothing."

² "Here's what I want to say: Don't, God, bring in a verdict of guilty without letting me know the charges you're bringing.

³ giving me a hard time, spurning me, a life you shaped by your very own hands, and then blessing the plots of the wicked?

⁴ You're not taken in by appearances, are you?

⁵ You have all eternity to work things out.

⁶ to dig up some dirt, to find some skeleton in my closet?

⁷ You also know no one can help me.

⁸ and now are you going to smash me to pieces?

⁹ Will you reduce me now to a mud pie?

¹⁰ semen and ovum—

¹¹ muscle and brain!

¹² You watched and guarded every breath I took.

¹³ I should have known that there was more to it—

¹⁴ wouldn't let me get by with a thing.

¹⁵ But if I'm innocent, it's no better—I'm still doomed. My belly is full of bitterness. I'm up to my ears in a swamp of affliction.

¹⁶ but you're too much for me, relentless, like a lion on the prowl.

¹⁷ You compound your anger and pile on the grief and pain!

¹⁸ I wish no one had ever laid eyes on me!

¹⁹ buried without ever having breathed.

²⁰ Can't you let up, and let me smile just once

²¹ before I'm nailed into my coffin, sealed in the ground,

²² blind in the final dark?"