[1] At last Job spoke and cursed the day of his birth. [2] "Let the day of my birth be cursed," he said, "and the night when I was conceived. [4] Let that day be forever forgotten. Let it be lost even to God, shrouded in eternal darkness. [5] Yes, let the darkness claim it for its own, and may a black cloud overshadow it. [6] May it be blotted off the calendar, never again to be counted among the days of the month of that year. [7] Let that night be bleak and joyless. [8] Let those who are experts at cursing curse it. [9] Let the stars of the night disappear. Let it long for light but never see it, never see the morning light. [10] Curse it for its failure to shut my mother's womb, for letting me be born to come to all this trouble. [11] "Why didn't I die at birth? [12] Why did the midwife let me live? Why did she nurse me at her breasts? [13] For if only I had died at birth, then I would be quiet now, asleep and at rest, [14] along with prime ministers and kings with all their pomp, and wealthy princes whose castles are full of rich treasures. [16] Oh, to have been stillborn!-to have never breathed or seen the light. [17] For there in death the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary are at rest. [18] There even prisoners are at ease, with no brutal jailer to curse them. [19] Both rich and poor alike are there, and the slave is free at last from his master. [20] "Oh, why should light and life be given to those in misery and bitterness, who long for death, and it won't come; who search for death as others search for food or money? [22] What blessed relief when at last they die! [23] Why is a man allowed to be born if God is only going to give him a hopeless life of uselessness and frustration? [24] I cannot eat for sighing; my groans pour out like water. [25] What I always feared has happened to me. [26] I was not fat and lazy, yet trouble struck me down."
