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 servant [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.: