1 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.