[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 the day black 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 I should 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 do I have rest; but trouble comes.”
