Job Laments his Birth
1 After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. 2 Job said:
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.
Do not let God from above seek for it,
nor 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 everything that makes the day black terrify it.
6 As for that night, let thick darkness seize upon it.
Let it not rejoice among the days of the year.
Let it not be entered into the number of the months.
7 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 the leviathan.
9 Let the stars of its twilight be dark.
Let it look for light, but have none,
nor let it see the eyelids of the morning,
10 because it did not shut up the doors of my mother’s womb,
nor did it hide trouble from my eyes.
11 “Why did I not die from the womb?
Why did I not give up the spirit when my mother bore me?
12 Why did knees receive me?
Or why 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 wastelands 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 do not 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 does not 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, nor am I quiet, nor have I rest;
but trouble comes.”