¹ After this Job opened 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, There is a man-child conceived.

⁴ Let that day be darkness. Let not God from above seek for it, nor let the light shine upon it.

⁵ Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it for their own. Let a cloud dwell upon it. Let blackness come upon 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 come into the number of the months.

⁷ Lo, let that night be barren. Let no joyful voice come in it.

⁸ Let them curse it who curse the day, who are ready to rouse up leviathan.

⁹ Let the stars of the twilight of it be dark. Let it look for light, but have none, nor let it behold the eyelids of the morning.

¹⁰ Because it did not shut up the doors of my mother's womb, nor 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 the knees receive me? Or why the breast, that I should suck?

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 waste places for themselves,

¹⁵ or with rulers who had gold, who filled their houses with silver.

¹⁶ Or I should have been as a hidden untimely birth, 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 do not hear the voice of the taskmaster.

¹⁹ The small and the great are there. And the servant 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 comes not, and dig for it more than for hid 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 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 upon me, and that which I am afraid of comes to me.

²⁶ I am not at ease, nor am I quiet, neither have I rest, but trouble comes.