The Complete Jewish Bible CJB
The Bible in Basic English BBE
1 "I am just worn out. "By my life [I swear], I will never abandon my complaint; I will speak out in my soul's bitterness.
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My soul is tired of life; I will let my sad thoughts go free in words; my soul will make a bitter outcry.
2 I will say to God, 'Don't condemn me! Tell me why you are contending with me.
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I will say to God, Do not put me down as a sinner; make clear to me what you have against me.
3 Do you gain some advantage from oppressing, from spurning what your own hands made, from shining on the schemes of the wicked?
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What profit is it to you to be cruel, to give up the work of your hands, looking kindly on the design of evil-doers?
4 Do you have eyes of flesh? Do you see as humans see?
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Have you eyes of flesh, or do you see as man sees?
5 Are your days like the days of mortals? Are your years like human years,
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Are your days as the days of man, or your years like his,
6 that you have to seek my guilt and search out my sin?
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That you take note of my sin, searching after my wrongdoing,
7 You know that I won't be condemned, yet no one can rescue me from your power.
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Though you see that I am not an evil-doer; and there is no one who is able to take a man out of your hands?
8 Your own hands shaped me, they made me; so why do you turn and destroy me?
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Your hands made me, and I was formed by you, but then, changing your purpose, you gave me up to destruction.
9 Please remember that you made me, like clay; will you return me to dust?
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O keep in mind that you made me out of earth; and will you send me back again to dust?
10 Didn't you pour me out like milk, then let me thicken like cheese?
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Was I not drained out like milk, becoming hard like cheese?
11 You clothed me with skin and flesh you knit me together with bones and sinews.
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By you I was clothed with skin and flesh, and joined together with bones and muscles.
12 You granted me life and grace; your careful attention preserved my spirit.
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You have been kind to me, and your grace has been with me, and your care has kept my spirit safe.
13 "'Yet you hid these things in your heart; I know what your secret purpose was -
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But you kept these things in the secret of your heart; I am certain this was in your thoughts:
14 to watch until I would sin and then not absolve me of my guilt.
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That, if I did wrong, you would take note of it, and would not make me clear from sin:
15 If I am wicked, woe to me! -but if righteous, I still don't dare raise my head, because I am so filled with shame, so soaked in my misery.
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That, if I was an evil-doer, the curse would come on me; and if I was upright, my head would not be lifted up, being full of shame and overcome with trouble.
16 You rise up to hunt me like a lion, and you keep treating me in such peculiar ways.
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And that if there was cause for pride, you would go after me like a lion; and again put out your wonders against me:
17 You keep producing fresh witnesses against me, your anger against me keeps growing, your troops assail me, wave after wave.
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That you would send new witnesses against me, increasing your wrath against me, and letting loose new armies on me.
18 "'Why did you bring me out of the womb? I wish I had died there where no eye could see me.
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Why then did you make me come out of my mother's body? It would have been better for me to have taken my last breath, and for no eye to have seen me,
19 I would have been as if I had never existed, I would have been carried from womb to grave.
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And for me to have been as if I had not been; to have been taken from my mother's body straight to my last resting-place.
20 Aren't my days few? So stop! Leave me alone, so I can cheer up a little
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Are not the days of my life small in number? Let your eyes be turned away from me, so that I may have a little pleasure,
21 before I go to the place of no return, to the land of darkness and death-dark gloom,
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Before I go to the place from which I will not come back, to the land where all is dark and black,
22 a land of gloom like darkness itself, of dense darkness and utter disorder, where even the light is dark.'"
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A land of thick dark, without order, where the very light is dark.
Complete Jewish Bible Copyright 1998 by David H. Stern. Published by Jewish New Testament Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
The Bible in Basic English is in the public domain.