Job 3

Job Laments His Birth

¹After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth.²And Job said:

³“Let the day perish on which I was born,

and the night that said,

‘A man is conceived.’

⁴Let that day be darkness!

May God above not seek it,

nor light shine upon it.

⁵Let gloom and deep darkness claim it.

Let clouds dwell upon it;

let the blackness of the day terrify it.

⁶That 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.

⁷Behold, let that night be barren;

let no joyful cry enter it.

⁸Let those curse it who curse the day,

who are ready to rouse up Leviathan.

⁹Let the stars of its dawn be dark;

let it hope for light, but have none,

nor see the eyelids of the morning,

¹⁰because it did not shut the doors of my mother's womb,

nor hide trouble from my eyes.

¹¹“Why did I not die at birth,

come out from the womb and expire?

¹²Why did the knees receive me?

Or why the breasts, that I should nurse?

¹³For then I would have lain down and been quiet;

I would have slept; then I would have been at rest,

¹⁴with kings and counselors of the earth

who rebuilt ruins for themselves,

¹⁵or with princes who had gold,

who filled their houses with silver.

¹⁶Or why was I not as a hidden stillborn child,

as infants who never see the light?

¹⁷There the wicked cease from troubling,

and there the weary are at rest.

¹⁸There the prisoners are at ease together;

they hear not the voice of the taskmaster.

¹⁹The small and the great are there,

and the slave is free from his master.

²⁰“Why is light given to him who is in misery,

and life to the bitter in soul,

²¹who long for death, but it comes not,

and dig for it more than for hidden treasures,

²²who rejoice exceedingly

and are glad when they find the grave?

²³Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden,

whom God has hedged in?

²⁴For my sighing comes instead of my bread,

and my groanings are poured out like water.

²⁵For the thing that I fear comes upon me,

and what I dread befalls me.

²⁶I am not at ease, nor am I quiet;

I have no rest, but trouble comes.”