Job 3

Chapter 3

¹After this, Job opened his mouth and cursed his day. ²And Job answered and said, ³Let the day perish in which I was born, and the night that said, There is a man child conceived. ⁴That day—let it be darkness, let not †God care for it from above, neither let light shine upon it: ⁵Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it; let clouds dwell upon it; let darkeners of the day terrify it. ⁶That night—let gloom seize upon 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 sound come therein; ⁸Let them curse it that curse the day, who are ready to rouse Leviathan; ⁹Let the stars of its twilight be dark; let it wait for light, and have none, neither let it see the eyelids of the dawn: ¹⁰Because it shut not up the doors of the womb that bore me, and hid not trouble from mine eyes.

¹¹Wherefore did I not die from the womb, —come forth from the belly and expire? ¹²Why did the knees meet me? and wherefore the breasts, that I should suck? ¹³For now should I have lain down and been quiet; I should have slept: then had I been at rest, ¹⁴With kings and counsellors of the earth, who build desolate places for themselves, ¹⁵Or with princes who had gold, who filled their houses with silver; ¹⁶Or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been; as infants that have not seen the light. ¹⁷There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the wearied are at rest. ¹⁸The prisoners together are at ease; they hear not the voice of the taskmaster. ¹⁹The small and great are there, and the bondman freed from his master.

²⁰Wherefore is light given to him that is in trouble, and life to those bitter of soul, ²¹Who long for death, and it cometh not, and dig for it more than for hidden treasures; ²²Who rejoice even exultingly and are glad when they find the grave? — ²³To the man whose way is hidden, and whom †God hath hedged in? ²⁴For my sighing cometh before my bread, and my groanings are poured out like the waters. ²⁵For I feared a fear, and it hath come upon me, and that which I dreaded hath come to me. ²⁶I was not in safety, neither had I quietness, neither was I at rest, and trouble came.