“I have heard many things like these before. What miserable comforters ¹  are you all!

See my pain and suffering! Forgive all my sins! ¹ 

When I tried to make sense of this, it was troubling to me. ¹ 

So he used suffering to humble them; ¹  they stumbled and no one helped them up.

because it ¹  did not shut the doors ²  of my mother’s womb on me, ³  nor did it hide trouble ⁴  from my eyes!

Even as I have seen, ¹  those who plow ²  iniquity ³  and those who sow trouble reap the same. ⁴ 

but people ¹  are born ²  to trouble, as surely as the sparks ³  fly ⁴  upward. ⁵ 

For you ¹  will forget your trouble; ²  you will remember it like water that ³  has flowed away.

They conceive ¹  trouble and bring forth evil; their belly ²  prepares deception.”

See the one who is pregnant with wickedness, who conceives destructive plans, and gives birth to harmful lies – ¹ 

He becomes the victim of his own destructive plans ¹  and the violence he intended for others falls on his own head. ² 

They are immune to the trouble common to men; they do not suffer as other men do. ¹ 

Cruel rulers ¹  are not your allies, those who make oppressive laws. ² 

He handed the territory of nations over to them, and they took possession of what other peoples had produced, ¹ 

As for the heads of those who surround me – may the harm done by ¹  their lips overwhelm them!

for their hearts contemplate violence, and their lips speak harm. ¹ 

let them ¹  drink and forget ²  their poverty, and remember their misery no more.

What benefit ¹  do people ²  get from all the effort which ³  they expend ⁴  on earth? ⁵ 

All of man’s labor is for nothing more than ¹  to fill his stomach ²  – yet his appetite ³  is never satisfied!

Those who enact unjust policies are as good as dead, ¹  those who are always instituting unfair regulations, ²