3:1 After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. |
3:2 And Job said: |
3:3 "Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night which said, 'A man-child is conceived.' |
3:4 Let that day be darkness! May God above not seek it, nor light shine upon it. |
3:5 Let gloom and deep darkness claim it. Let clouds dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it. |
3:6 That 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. |
3:7 Yea, let that night be barren; let no joyful cry be heard in it. |
3:8 Let those curse it who curse the day, who are skilled to rouse up Levi'athan. |
3:9 Let the stars of its dawn be dark; let it hope for light, but have none, nor see the eyelids of the morning; |
3:10 because it did not shut the doors of my mother's womb, nor hide trouble from my eyes. |
3:11 "Why did I not die at birth, come forth from the womb and expire? |
3:12 Why did the knees receive me? Or why the breasts, that I should suck? |
3:13 For then I should have lain down and been quiet; I should have slept; then I should have been at rest, |
3:14 with kings and counselors of the earth who rebuilt ruins for themselves, |
3:15 or with princes who had gold, who filled their houses with silver. |
3:16 Or why was I not as a hidden untimely birth, as infants that never see the light? |
3:17 There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary are at rest. |
3:18 There the prisoners are at ease together; they hear not the voice of the taskmaster. |
3:19 The small and the great are there, and the slave is free from his master. |
3:20 "Why is light given to him that is in misery, and life to the bitter in soul, |
3:21 who long for death, but it comes not, and dig for it more than for hid treasures; |
3:22 who rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, when they find the grave? |
3:23 Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, whom God has hedged in? |
3:24 For my sighing comes as my bread, and my groanings are poured out like water. |
3:25 For the thing that I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me. |
3:26 I am not at ease, nor am I quiet; I have no rest; but trouble comes." |