Job 3
v1
After this Job opened his mouth, and cursed the day of his birth.
v2
Job answered:
v3
“Let the day perish in which I was born, the night which said, ‘There is a boy conceived.‘
v4
Let that day be darkness. Don’t let God from above seek for it, neither let the light shine on it.
v5
Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it for their own. Let a cloud dwell on it. Let all that makes the day black terrify it.
v6
As for that night, let thick darkness seize on it. Let it not rejoice among the days of the year. Let it not come into the number of the months.
v7
Behold, let that night be barren. Let no joyful voice come therein.
v8
Let them curse it who curse the day, who are ready to rouse up leviathan.
v9
Let the stars of its twilight be dark. Let it look for light, but have none, neither let it see the eyelids of the morning,
v10
because it didn’t shut up the doors of my mother’s womb, nor did it hide trouble from my eyes.
v11
“Why didn’t I die from the womb? Why didn’t I give up the spirit when my mother bore me?
v12
Why did the knees receive me? Or why the breast, that I should nurse?
v13
For now I should have lain down and been quiet. I should have slept, then I would have been at rest,
v14
with kings and counselors of the earth, who built up waste places for themselves;
v15
or with princes who had gold, who filled their houses with silver:
v16
or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been, as infants who never saw light.
v17
There the wicked cease from troubling. There the weary are at rest.
v18
There the prisoners are at ease together. They don’t hear the voice of the taskmaster.
v19
The small and the great are there. The servant is free from his master.
v20
“Why is light given to him who is in misery, life to the bitter in soul,
v21
Who long for death, but it doesn’t come; and dig for it more than for hidden treasures,
v22
who rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, when they can find the grave?
v23
Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in?
v24
For my sighing comes before I eat. My groanings are poured out like water.
v25
For the thing which I fear comes on me, That which I am afraid of comes to me.
v26
I am not at ease, neither am I quiet, neither do I have rest; but trouble comes.”