1: "Human life is a struggle, isn't it? It's a life sentence to hard labor.
2: Like field hands longing for quitting time and working stiffs with nothing to hope for but payday,
3: I'm given a life that meanders and goes nowhere--months of aimlessness, nights of misery!
4: I go to bed and think, "How long till I can get up?' I toss and turn as the night drags on--and I'm fed up!
5: I'm covered with maggots and scabs. My skin gets scaly and hard, then oozes with pus.
6: My days come and go swifter than the click of knitting needles, and then the yarn runs out--an unfinished life!
7: "God, don't forget that I'm only a puff of air! These eyes have had their last look at goodness.
8: And your eyes have seen the last of me; even while you're looking, there'll be nothing left to look at.
9: When a cloud evaporates, it's gone for good; those who go to the grave never come back.
10: They don't return to visit their families; never again will friends drop in for coffee.
11: "And so I'm not keeping one bit of this quiet, I'm laying it all out on the table; my complaining to high heaven is bitter, but honest.
12: Are you going to put a muzzle on me, the way you quiet the sea and still the storm?
13: If I say, "I'm going to bed, then I'll feel better. A little nap will lift my spirits,'
14: You come and so scare me with nightmares and frighten me with ghosts
15: That I'd rather strangle in the bedclothes than face this kind of life any longer.
16: I hate this life! Who needs any more of this? Let me alone! There's nothing to my life--it's nothing but smoke.
17: "What are mortals anyway, that you bother with them, that you even give them the time of day?
18: That you check up on them every morning, looking in on them to see how they're doing?
19: Let up on me, will you? Can't you even let me spit in peace?
20: Even suppose I'd sinned--how would that hurt you? You're responsible for every human being. Don't you have better things to do than pick on me? Why make a federal case out of me?
21: Why don't you just forgive my sins and start me off with a clean slate? The way things are going, I'll soon be dead. You'll look high and low, but I won't be around." BILDAD's RESPONSE Does God Mess Up?