Job Laments his Birth

1After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day. 2And Job answered and said:

3Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night which said, There is a man child conceived.

4Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it.

5Let 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.

6As 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.

7Lo, let that night be barren; let no joyful voice come therein.

8Let them curse it that curse the day, who are ready to rouse up leviathan.

9Let 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:

10Because it shut not up the doors of my mother's womb, nor hid trouble from mine eyes.

11Why died I not from the womb? why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly?

12Why did the knees receive me? or why the breasts, that I should suck?

13For now should I have lain down and been quiet; I should have slept; then had I been at rest:

14With kings and counsellors of the earth, which built up waste places for themselves;

15Or with princes that had gold, who filled their houses with silver:

16Or as an hidden untimely birth I had not been; as infants which never saw light.

17There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest.

18There the prisoners are at ease together; they hear not the voice of the taskmaster.

19The small and great are there; and the servant is free from his master.

20Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul;

21Which long for death, but it cometh not; and dig for it more than for hid treasures;

22Which rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, when they can find the grave?

23Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged in?

24For my sighing cometh before I eat, and my roarings are poured out like water.

25For the thing which I fear cometh upon me, and that which I am afraid of cometh unto me.

26I am not at ease, neither am I quiet, neither have I rest; but trouble cometh.