Job 3

¹ After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth.

² And Job said:

³ "Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night which said, 'A man-child is conceived.'

⁴ Let that day be darkness! May God above not seek it, nor light shine upon it.

⁵ Let gloom and deep darkness claim it. Let clouds dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it.

⁶ That night--let thick darkness seize it! let it not rejoice among the days of the year, let it not come into the number of the months.

⁷ Yea, let that night be barren; let no joyful cry be heard in it.

⁸ Let those curse it who curse the day, who are skilled to rouse up Leviathan.

⁹ Let the stars of its dawn be dark; let it hope for light, but have none, nor see the eyelids of the morning;

¹⁰ because it did not shut the doors of my mother's womb, nor hide trouble from my eyes.

¹¹ "Why did I not die at birth, come forth from the womb and expire?

¹² Why did the knees receive me? Or why the breasts, that I should suck?

¹³ For then I should have lain down and been quiet; I should have slept; then I should have been at rest,

¹⁴ with kings and counselors of the earth who rebuilt ruins for themselves,

¹⁵ or with princes who had gold, who filled their houses with silver.

¹⁶ Or why was I not as a hidden untimely birth, as infants that never see the light?

¹⁷ There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary are at rest.

¹⁸ There the prisoners are at ease together; they hear not the voice of the taskmaster.

¹⁹ The small and the great are there, and the slave is free from his master.

²⁰ "Why is light given to him that is in misery, and life to the bitter in soul,

²¹ who long for death, but it comes not, and dig for it more than for hid treasures;

²² who rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, when they find the grave?

²³ Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, whom God has hedged in?

²⁴ For my sighing comes as my bread, and my groanings are poured out like water.

²⁵ For the thing that I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me.

²⁶ I am not at ease, nor am I quiet; I have no rest; but trouble comes."