Job — Chapter 3

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

²Job answered:

³"Let the day perish in which I was born, The night which said, `There is a man-child conceived.`

⁴Let that day be darkness; Don`t let God from above seek for it, Neither let the light shine on it.

⁵Let 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.

⁶As 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.

⁷Behold, let that night be barren. Let no joyful voice come therein.

⁸Let them curse it who curse the day, Who are ready to rouse up leviathan.

⁹Let the stars of the twilight of it be dark. Let it look for light, but have none, Neither let it see the eyelids of the morning,

¹⁰Because 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?

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

¹³For now should I have lain down and been quiet. I should have slept, then I would have been at rest,

¹⁴With kings and counselors of the earth, Who built up waste places for themselves;

¹⁵Or with princes who had gold, Who filled their houses with silver:

¹⁶Or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been, As infants who never saw light.

¹⁷There the wicked cease from troubling; There the weary are at rest.

¹⁸There the prisoners are at ease together. They don`t hear the voice of the taskmaster.

¹⁹The 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,

²¹Who long for death, but it doesn`t come; Dig for it more than for hidden treasures,

²²Who rejoice exceedingly, Are glad, when they can find the grave?

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

²⁴For my sighing comes before I eat, My groanings are poured out like water.

²⁵For the thing which I fear comes on me, That which I am afraid of comes to me.

²⁶I am not at ease, neither am I quiet, neither have I rest; But trouble comes."