“I am weary of my life; I will complain without restraint; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.

I have refused to touch such things; they are like loathsome food to me.

so that I would prefer strangling, and death more than life.

“How long will you torment me and crush me with your words?

so that his life loathes food, and his soul rejects appetizing fare.

He draws near to the place of corruption, and his life to the messengers of death.

They die in their youth, and their life ends among the male cultic prostitutes.

I also could speak like you, if you were in my place; I could pile up words against you and I could shake my head at you.

“Why does God give light to one who is in misery, and life to those whose soul is bitter,

I am blameless. I do not know myself. I despise my life.

Why do I put myself in peril, and take my life in my hands?

Only his flesh has pain for himself, and he mourns for himself.”

And another man dies in bitterness of soul, never having tasted anything good.

But he is unchangeable, and who can change him? Whatever he has desired, he does.

“As surely as God lives, who has denied me justice, the Almighty, who has made my life bitter –

“And now my soul pours itself out within me; days of suffering take hold of me.

Have I not wept for the unfortunate? Was not my soul grieved for the poor?

I have not even permitted my mouth to sin by asking for his life through a curse –

if I have eaten its produce without paying, or caused the death of its owners,

He spares a person’s life from corruption, his very life from crossing over the river.