[1] After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day.
[2] And Job answered and said:
[3] Let the day perish wherein I was born, And the night which said, There is a man-child conceived.
[4] Let that day be darkness; Let not God from above seek for it, Neither let the light shine upon it.
[5] Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it for their own; Let a cloud dwell upon it; Let all that maketh black the day terrify it.
[6] As for that night, let thick darkness seize upon it: Let it not rejoice among the days of the year; Let it not come into the number of the months.
[7] Lo, let that night be barren; Let no joyful voice come therein.
[8] Let them curse it that curse the day, Who are ready to rouse up leviathan.
[9] Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark: Let it look for light, but have none; Neither let it behold the eyelids of the morning:
[10] Because it shut not up the doors of mymother’swomb, Nor hid trouble from mine eyes.
[11] Why died I not from the womb? Why did I not give up the ghost when my mother bare me?
[12] Why did the knees receive me? Or why the breasts, that I should suck?
[13] For now should I have lain down and been quiet; I should have slept; then had I been at rest,
[14] With kings and counsellors of the earth, Who built up waste places for themselves;
[15] Or with princes that had gold, Who filled their houses with silver:
[16] Or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been, As infants that never saw light.
[17] There the wicked cease from troubling; And there the weary are at rest.
[18] There the prisoners are at ease together; They hear not the voice of the taskmaster.
[19] The small and the great are there: And the servant is free from his master.
[20] Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, And life unto the bitter in soul;
[21] Who long for death, but it cometh not, And dig for it more than for hid treasures;
[22] Who rejoice exceedingly, And are glad, when they can find the grave?
[23] Why is light givento a man whose way is hid, And whom God hath hedged in?
[24] For my sighing cometh before I eat, And my groanings are poured out like water.
[25] For the thing which I fear cometh upon me, And that which I am afraid of cometh unto me.
[26] I am not at ease, neither am I quiet, neither have I rest; But trouble cometh.
