First reading
Job spoke to his friends: “Does not the human being have a hard service on earth, and are not their days like the days of a labourer? Like a slave who longs for the shadow, and like a labourer who looks for their wages, so I am allotted months of emptiness, and nights of misery are apportioned to me.
“When I lie down I say, ‘When shall I rise?’ But the night is long, and I am full of tossing until dawn.
“My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and come to their end without hope. Remember that my life is a breath; my eye will never again see good.”