3 ¶ After this Job opened his mouth and cursed his day.

² And Job spoke and said,

³ Let the day perish in which I was born and the night in which it was said, There is a man 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 redeem 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 be joined unto the days of the year; let it not come into the number of the months.

⁷ O, let that night be solitary; let no song come therein!

⁸ Let them curse it that curse the day, who are ready to raise up their mourning.

⁹ Let the stars of its dawn be darkened; they waited for light, but have none; neither let them see the dawning of the day;

¹⁰ because it did not shut up the doors of my mother’s womb nor hide the misery from my eyes.

¹¹ ¶ Why did I not die from the womb? Why did I not give up the spirit when I came out of the belly?

¹² Why did the knees receive me? Of what use the breasts that I should suck?

¹³ For now I should have lain still and been quiet; I should have slept; then I would have been at rest,

¹⁴ with the kings and the counsellors of the earth, who built desolate places for themselves;

¹⁵ or with princes that had gold, who filled their houses with silver.

¹⁶ Or, why was I not hidden as an untimely birth, 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 do not hear the voice of the oppressor.

¹⁹ The small and the great are there, and the slave is free from his master.

²⁰ ¶ Why 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 search for it more than for hid treasures;

²² who rejoice exceedingly and are glad when they can find the grave;

²³ to the man who does not know which way he goes and whom God has hedged in?

²⁴ For my sighing comes before I eat, and my roarings are poured out like the waters.

²⁵ For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me and that which I was afraid of is come unto me.

²⁶ I never had prosperity, nor did I secure myself, neither was I at rest; yet trouble came.