7
📚✭“Is there not a hard struggle for man on earth? And are his days not like the days of a hired man? 2 📚As a servant earnestly desires the shade, and as a hired man looks for the reward of his work,
3 📚So I have been allotted months of futility, and nights of weariness have been appointed to me.
4 📚When I lie down, I say, ‘When shall I arise, and the night be gone?’ And I have my fill of tossing to and fro until dawn.
5 📚My body is clothed with worms and dirty scabs. My skin is broken open, and has become loathsome.
6 📚“My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and are spent without hope.
7 📚✭Oh, remember that my life is a breath. My eyes will never again see what is good.
8 📚The eyes of him who has seen me will see me no more; your eyes will turn toward me, and I will not be.
9 📚As the cloud is consumed and vanishes away, so he who goes down to the grave✭ will not come up again.
10 📚He will return no more to his house, nor will his place know him any more.
11 📚“Therefore I will not refrain 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 a sea monster, 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 frighten me with dreams, and terrify me through visions,
15 📚So that my soul chooses strangling and death rather than my life.
16 📚I loathe it. I would not live always. Let me alone, for my days are empty.
17 📚✭“What is man that you should make much of him, and that you should set your heart on him?
18 📚And that you should visit him every morning, and test him every moment?
19 📚Will you never turn away from me, or let me alone until I swallow down my spittle?
20 📚✭I have sinned; what have I done to you, O watcher of men? Why have you set me up as your target, so that I am a burden to myself?
21 📚✭And why do you not pardon my transgression, and take away my iniquity? For now I will sleep in the dust, and you will look for me in the morning, but I will not be”.