¹Is there not service for humankind upon the land, and are his days like the days of a hired laborer?

²Like a slave who pants for the shade, and like a hired laborer who waits eagerly for his wages.

³So I have been made heir to months of emptiness, and nights of toil have been assigned to me.

⁴When I lie down I say, 'When will I rise?' The evening stretches out, and I am sated with tossings until the morning twilight.

⁵My flesh is clothed with maggots and clods of dust; my skin settles, then disappears.

⁶My days are swifter than the loom, and they come to an end where hope ends.

⁷Remember that my life is a breath; my eye will not return to see good.

⁸The eye of one who sees me will not behold me; your eyes are on me, and I am not.

⁹A cloud vanishes and goes away; so one who goes down to Sheol will not come up.

¹⁰He will not return again to his house, and his place will not recognize him anymore.

¹¹Also, I will not hold back my mouth; I will speak in the tightness of my breath; I will complain in the bitterness of my being.

¹²Am I the sea, or a sea monster, that you set a guard over me?

¹³When I said, 'My couch will comfort me; my bed will carry my complaint,'

¹⁴then you dismay me with dreams, and terrify me with visions.

¹⁵So my being chose strangling, death, over my bones.

¹⁶I despise it; I will not live forever. Cease from me, for my days are a vapor.

¹⁷What is man that you make him great, and that you set your heart on him,

¹⁸that you visit him every morning, and test him every moment?

¹⁹How long will you not look away from me, and not let me go until I swallow down my spit?

²⁰I have sinned; what do I do to you, watcher of mankind? Why have you set me as a mark to strike at you, so that I have become a burden to myself.

²¹And why will you not take away my transgression and let my guilt pass over. For now I will lie down in the dust; you will seek me early, and I will not be.