| 1 | After this Job opened his mouth, and cursed the day of his birth. |
| 2 | Job answered: |
| 3 | "Let the day perish in which I was born, the night which said, 'There is a boy conceived.' |
| 4 | Let that day be darkness. Don't let God from above seek for it, neither let the light shine on it. |
| 5 | Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it for their own. Let a cloud dwell on it. Let all that makes black the day terrify it. |
| 6 | As for that night, let thick darkness seize on it. Let it not rejoice among the days of the year. Let it not come into the number of the months. |
| 7 | Behold, let that night be barren. Let no joyful voice come therein. |
| 8 | Let them curse it who curse the day, who are ready to rouse up leviathan. |
| 9 | Let the stars of its twilight be dark. Let it look for light, but have none, neither let it see the eyelids of the morning, |
| 10 | because it didn't shut up the doors of my mother's womb, nor did it hide trouble from my eyes. |
| 11 | "Why didn't I die from the womb? Why didn't I give up the spirit when my mother bore me? |
| 12 | Why did the knees receive me? Or why the breast, that I should nurse? |
| 13 | For now should I have lain down and been quiet. I should have slept, then I would have been at rest, |
| 14 | with kings and counselors of the earth, who built up waste places for themselves; |
| 15 | or with princes who had gold, who filled their houses with silver: |
| 16 | or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been, as infants who never saw light. |
| 17 | There the wicked cease from troubling. There the weary are at rest. |
| 18 | There the prisoners are at ease together. They don't hear the voice of the taskmaster. |
| 19 | The small and the great are there. The servant is free from his master. |
| 20 | "Why is light given to him who is in misery, life to the bitter in soul, |
| 21 | Who long for death, but it doesn't come; and dig for it more than for hidden treasures, |
| 22 | who rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, when they can find the grave? |
| 23 | Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in? |
| 24 | For my sighing comes before I eat. My groanings are poured out like water. |
| 25 | For the thing which I fear comes on me, That which I am afraid of comes to me. |
| 26 | I am not at ease, neither am I quiet, neither have I rest; but trouble comes." |
