Job 3

Chapter 3

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

²And Job said:

³“Let the day perish wherein I was born,

and the night which said,

‘A man-child 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.

⁷Yea, let that night be barren;

let no joyful cry be heard in it.

⁸Let those curse it who curse the day,

who are skilled 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 forth from the womb and expire?

¹²Why did the knees receive me?

Or why the breasts, that I should suck?

¹³For then I should have lain down and been quiet;

I should have slept; then I should 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 untimely birth,

as infants that 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 that 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 hid treasures;

²²who rejoice exceedingly,

and are glad, when they find the grave?

²³Why is light given to a man whose way is hid,

whom God has hedged in?

²⁴For my sighing comes as 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.”