Job 3

3After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day. ²And Job ^†spake, and said,

^3aLet the day perish wherein I was born,

And the night in which it was said, There is a man child conceived.

⁴Let that day be darkness;

Let not God regard it from above,

Neither let the light shine upon it.

⁵Let darkness and ^bthe shadow of death ^c||stain it;

Let a cloud dwell upon it;

^||Let the blackness of the day terrify it.

⁶As for that night, let darkness seize upon it;

^||Let it not be joined unto the days of the year,

Let it not come into the number of the months.

⁷Lo, let that night be ^dsolitary,

Let no ^ejoyful voice come therein.

⁸Let them curse it that curse the day,

Who are ready to raise up ^||their mourning.

⁹Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark;

Let it look for light, but have none;

Neither let it see ^†the dawning of the day:

¹⁰Because it shut not up the doors of my mother’s womb,

Nor hid sorrow from mine eyes.

^11fWhy died I not from the womb?

Why did I ^gnot give up the ghost when I came out of the belly?

¹²Why did ^hthe knees prevent me?

Or why the breasts that I should suck?

¹³For now should I have lain still and been quiet,

I should have slept: then had I been at rest,

¹⁴With kings and counsellers of the earth,

Which built desolate places for themselves;

¹⁵Or with princes that had gold,

Who filled their houses with silver:

¹⁶Or as an hidden ⁱuntimely birth I had not been;

As infants which never saw light.

¹⁷There the wicked cease from troubling;

And there the ^†weary be at rest.

¹⁸There the prisoners ^jrest together;

^kThey hear not the voice of the oppressor.

¹⁹The small and great are there;

And the servant is free from his master.

²⁰Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery,

And life unto the ^lbitter in soul;

²¹Which ^†mlong for death, but it cometh not;

And dig for it more than for ⁿhid treasures;

²²Which rejoice ^oexceedingly,

And are glad, when they can find the grave?

^23pWhy is light given to a man ^qwhose way is hid,

And ^rwhom God hath hedged in?

²⁴For my sighing cometh ^†before I eat,

And my roarings are poured out like the waters.

²⁵For ^†the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me,

And that which I was afraid of is come unto me.

²⁶I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet;

Yet trouble came.