[1] After this Job opened his mouth, and cursed the day of his birth.
[2] Job answered:
[3] “Let the day perish in which I was born, the night which said, ‘There is a boy conceived.’
[4] Let that day be darkness. Don’t let God from above seek for it, neither let the light shine on it.
[5] Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it for their own. Let a cloud dwell on it. Let all that makes black the day terrify it.
[6] As for that night, let thick darkness seize on it. Let it not rejoice among the days of the year. Let it not come into the number of the months.
[7] Behold, let that night be barren. Let no joyful voice come therein.
[8] Let them curse it who curse the day, who are ready to rouse up leviathan.
[9] Let the stars of its twilight be dark. Let it look for light, but have none, neither let it see the eyelids of the morning,
[10] because it didn’t shut up the doors of my mother’s womb, nor did it hide trouble from my eyes.
[11] “Why didn’t I die from the womb? Why didn’t I give up the spirit when my mother bore me?
[12] Why did the knees receive me? Or why the breast, that I should nurse?
[13] For now should I have lain down and been quiet. I should have slept, then I would have been at rest,
[14] with kings and counselors of the earth, who built up waste places for themselves;
[15] or with princes who 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. There the weary are at rest.
[18] There the prisoners are at ease together. They don’t hear the voice of the taskmaster.
[19] The small and the great are there. The servant is free from his master.
[20] “Why is light given to him who is in misery, life to the bitter in soul,
[21] Who long for death, but it doesn’t come; 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 hidden, whom God has hedged in?
[24] For my sighing comes before I eat. My groanings are poured out like water.
[25] For the thing which I fear comes on me, That which I am afraid of comes to me.
[26] I am not at ease, neither am I quiet, neither have I rest; but trouble comes.”