Study Desk

I go in fear of all my pains; I am certain that I will not be free from sin in your eyes.

If I am washed with snow water, and make my hands clean with soap;

For he is not a man as I am, that I might give him an answer, that we might come together before a judge.

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?

But you kept these things in the secret of your heart; I am certain this was in your thoughts:

You may say, My way is clean, and I am free from sin in your eyes.

But I have a mind as well as you; I am equal to you: yes, who has not knowledge of such things as these?

It seems that I am to be as one who is a cause of laughing to his neighbour, one who makes his prayer to God and is answered! the upright man who has done no wrong is to be made sport of!

The same things are in my mind as in yours; I am equal to you.

See now, I have put my cause in order, and I am certain that I will be seen to be right.

But now he has overcome me with weariness and fear, and I am in the grip of all my trouble.

I am broken by his wrath, and his hate has gone after me; he has made his teeth sharp against me: my haters are looking on me with cruel eyes;

I am broken with wound after wound; he comes rushing on me like a man of war.

If I am waiting for the underworld as my house, if I have made my bed in the dark;

I am broken down by him on every side, and I am gone; my hope is uprooted like a tree.

His wrath is burning against me, and I am to him as one of his haters.

I am strange to my women-servants, and seem to them as one from another country.

My breath is strange to my wife, and I am disgusting to the offspring of my mother's body.

But I am certain that he who will take up my cause is living, and that in time to come he will take his place on the dust;

See, I am conscious of your thoughts, and of your violent purposes against me;