1 After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day.
2 And Job answered and said:
3 Let the day perish in which I was born, And the night which said, A [noble] man was 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 stay on it; Let all that makes blackness of day terrify it.
6 As for that night, let thick darkness seize on it: Don't let it rejoice among the days of the year; Don't let it come into the number of the months.
7 Look, let that night be barren; Let no joyful voice come in it.
8 Let them curse it that 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 did not shut up the doors of my [mother's] womb, Nor hid trouble from my eyes.
11 Why didn't I die from the womb? Why didn't I give up the ghost when my mother bore me?
12 Why did the knees receive me? Or why the breast, that I should be nursed?
13 For now I should 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 that had gold, Who filled their houses with silver:
16 Or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been, As infants that never saw light.
17 There the wicked cease from troubling; And 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: And the slave is free from his master.
20 Why is light given to him who is in misery, And life to the bitter in soul?
21 Who long for death, but it does not come, And dig for it more than for hid treasures;
22 Who rejoice exceedingly, And are glad, when they can find the grave
23 To a [noble] man whose way is hid, And whom God has hedged in.
24 For my sighing comes before I eat, And my groanings are poured out like water.
25 For the thing which I fear comes on me, And 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.