Job 3

¹After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. ²And Job said:

³ “Let the day perish on which I was born,
and the night that said,
‘A man is conceived.’

⁴Let that day be darkness!
May God above not seek it,
nor light shine upon it.

⁵Let gloom and deep darkness claim it.
Let clouds dwell upon it;
let the blackness of the day terrify it.

⁶That night—let thick darkness seize 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 cry enter it.

⁸Let those curse it who curse the day,
who are ready to rouse up Leviathan.

⁹Let the stars of its dawn be dark;
let it hope for light, but have none,
nor see the eyelids of the morning,

¹⁰because it did not shut the doors of my mother’s womb,
nor hide trouble from my eyes.

¹¹“Why did I not die at birth,
come out from the womb and expire?

¹²Why did the knees receive me?
Or why the breasts, that I should nurse?

¹³For then I would have lain down and been quiet;
I would have slept; then I would have been at rest,

¹⁴with kings and counselors of the earth
who rebuilt ruins for themselves,

¹⁵or with princes who had gold,
who filled their houses with silver.

¹⁶Or why was I not as a hidden stillborn child,
as infants who never see the light?

¹⁷There the wicked cease from troubling,
and there the weary are at rest.

¹⁸There the prisoners are at ease together;
they hear not the voice of the taskmaster.

¹⁹The small and the great are there,
and the slave is free from his master.

²⁰“Why is light given to him who is in misery,
and life to the bitter in soul,

²¹who long for death, but it comes not,
and dig for it more than for hidden treasures,

²²who rejoice exceedingly
and are glad when they find the grave?

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

²⁴For my sighing comes instead of my bread,
and my groanings are poured out like water.

²⁵ For the thing that I fear comes upon me,
and what I dread befalls me.

²⁶I am not at ease, nor am I quiet;
I have no rest, but trouble comes.”

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