[1] After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day. [2] And Job answered and said: [3] Let the day perish wherein I was born, And the night which said, There is a man-child conceived. [4] Let that day be darkness; Let not God from above seek for it, Neither let the light shine upon it. [5] Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it for their own; Let a cloud dwell upon it; Let all that maketh black the day terrify it. [6] As for that night, let thick darkness seize upon it: Let it not rejoice among the days of the year; Let it not come into the number of the months. [7] Lo, let that night be barren; Let no joyful voice come therein. [8] Let them curse it that curse the day, Who are ready to rouse up leviathan. [9] Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark: Let it look for light, but have none; Neither let it behold the eyelids of the morning: [10] Because it shut not up the doors of my mother's womb, Nor hid trouble from mine eyes. [11] Why died I not from the womb? Why did I not give up the ghost when my mother bare me? [12] Why did the knees receive me? Or why the breasts, that I should suck? [13] For now should I have lain down and been quiet; I should have slept; then had I been at rest, [14] With kings and counsellors of the earth, Who built up waste places for themselves; [15] Or with princes that had gold, Who filled their houses with silver: [16] Or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been, As infants that never saw 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 servant is free from his master. [20] Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, And life unto the bitter in soul; [21] Who long for death, but it cometh not, And dig for it more than for hid 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 hid, And whom God hath hedged in? [24] For my sighing cometh before I eat, And my groanings are poured out like water. [25] For the thing which I fear cometh upon me, And that which I am afraid of cometh unto me. [26] I am not at ease, neither am I quiet, neither have I rest; But trouble cometh.
