1. After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day.
2. And Job spoke, and said,
3. Let the day perish on which I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a male child conceived.
4. Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it.
5. Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it; let a cloud dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it.
6. As for that night, let 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 solitary, let no joyful voice come into it.
8. Let them curse it that curse the day, who are ready to arouse leviathan.
9. Let the stars of its twilight be dark; let it look for light, but have none; neither let it see the dawning of the day:
10. Because it shut not up the doors of my mother’s womb, nor hid sorrow from my eyes.
11. Why died I not from the womb? why did I not expire when I came out of the womb?
12. Why did the knees receive me? or why the breasts that I should nurse?
13. For now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept: then would I have been at rest,
14. With kings and counselors of the earth, who built desolate 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 who never saw light.
17. There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary are at rest.
18. There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor.
19. The small and great are there; and the servant is free from his master.
20. Therefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul;
21. Who long for death, but it comes not; and dig for it more than for hidden treasures;
22. Who rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, when they can find the grave?
23. Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God has hedged in?
24. For my sighing comes before I eat, and my groanings are poured out like the waters.
25. For the thing which I greatly feared has come upon me, and that which I was afraid of has come unto me.
26. I was not at ease, neither had I quiet, neither was I at rest; yet trouble came.