Job Considers Patience and Hope

“Aren’t our days on the earth numbered?
Aren’t our hours counted as if we worked for wages?
We are servants praying for evening;
We are employees waiting for our checks.
It is our job to live in vanity;
It is our job to live through the nights.

“I lie down and say, ‘Will I wake up
And the night be gone?’
All I do is toss to and fro.
My flesh is clothed with worms and clods of dust.
My skin is broken and loathsome.
My days move faster than a weaver's shuttle,
And they are spent without hope.

“Remember—my life is so much wind.
My eye will see no more good.
Every eye that has looked upon me
Will see me no more.
Your eyes are upon me, and I am not.

“Just as a cloud is consumed and vanishes,
So is he who goes into the grave.
He will go no more to his house;
His daily routines won’t know him.

“That is why I keep talking:
I am speaking the anguish of my heart;
I am voicing the bitterness of my soul.

“Am I a sea, or a whale,
That you set a watch over me?
When I say that my bed will comfort me,
Or that my couch will ease my complaining,
You try scaring me with your dreams;
You try terrifying me with your visions.

“So, my soul chooses strangling and death rather than life.
I loathe life; I do not wish to live any longer.
Leave me alone; my days are vanity.

“What is man, that you should honor him?
That you should follow him?
That you should visit him every morning
And try him every moment?

“How long until you leave me?
How long before I can swallow my own spit in private?

“So, I have sinned.
What could I do to you,
Preserver of humanity?
Why have you declared war on me,
So that I am a burden to myself?
Why have you not pardoned my wrongs?
Why have you not taken away my iniquity?

“For now, allow me to sleep in the dust.
You will seek me in the morning,
But I will not be.”