1 "Do not human beings have a hard service on earth, and are not their days like the days of a laborer?2 Like a slave who longs for the shadow, and like laborers who look for their wages,3 so I am allotted months of emptiness, and nights of misery are apportioned to me.4 When I lie down I say, 'When shall I rise?' But the night is long, and I am full of tossing until dawn.5 My flesh is clothed with worms and dirt; my skin hardens, then breaks out again.6 My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle, and come to their end without hope.7 "Remember that my life is a breath; my eye will never again see good.8 The eye that beholds me will see me no more; while your eyes are upon me, I shall be gone.9 As the cloud fades and vanishes, so those who go down to Sheol do not come up;10 they return no more to their houses, nor do their places know them any more.11 "Therefore I will not restrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.12 Am I the Sea, or the Dragon, that you set a guard over me?13 When I say, 'My bed will comfort me, my couch will ease my complaint,'14 then you scare me with dreams and terrify me with visions,15 so that I would choose strangling and death rather than this body.16 I loathe my life; I would not live forever. Let me alone, for my days are a breath.17 What are human beings, that you make so much of them, that you set your mind on them,18 visit them every morning, test them every moment?19 Will you not look away from me for a while, let me alone until I swallow my spittle?20 If I sin, what do I do to you, you watcher of humanity? Why have you made me your target? Why have I become a burden to you?21 Why do you not pardon my transgression and take away my iniquity? For now I shall lie in the earth; you will seek me, but I shall not be."