Job 3

¹ After this Job opened his mouth, and cursed his day.

² And Job spoke, and said,

³ “Let the day perish wherein 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 claim 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 rejoice among the days of the year, let it not come into the number of the months.

⁷ Lo, let that night be barren; let no joyful voice come therein. ⁸ Let them curse it that curse the day, who are ready to raise up Leviathan. ⁹ Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark; let it look for light, but have none; neither let it see the eyelids of the morning: ¹⁰ because it shut not up the doors of my mother’s womb, nor hid sorrow from mine eyes.

¹¹ Why died I not from the womb? why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly? ¹² Why did the knees receive me? or why the breasts, that I should suck? ¹³ For now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept: then had I been at rest, ¹⁴ with kings and counsellors of the earth, which built desolate 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 which never saw light.

¹⁷ There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest. ¹⁸ There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor. ¹⁹ The small and great are there; and the servant is free from his master.

²⁰ Wherefore is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God has hedged in? ²¹ For my sighing cometh before I eat, and my roarings are poured out like the waters. ²² For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me. ²³ I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet; yet trouble came.