Job 3

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

²And Job said :

³Let 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 .

¹¹Why 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 .

²⁰Why 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 .

²⁵For 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 .