1 After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day.
2 And Job answered and said:
3 Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night which 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 for their own; let a cloud dwell upon it; let all that maketh black the day 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 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 rouse up leviathan.
9 Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark: let it look for light, but have none; neither let it behold the eyelids of the morning:
10 Because it shut not up the doors of my mother's womb, nor hid trouble 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 down and been quiet; I should have slept; then had I been at rest:
14 With kings and counsellors of the earth, which built up waste places for themselves;
15 Or with princes that had gold, who filled their houses with silver:
16 Or as an 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 are at ease together; they hear not the voice of the taskmaster.
19 The small and great are there; and the servant is free from his master.
20 Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul;
21 Which long for death, but it cometh not; and dig for it more than for hid treasures;
22 Which 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 hath hedged in?
24 For my sighing cometh before I eat, and my roarings are poured out like water.
25 For the thing which I fear cometh upon me, and that which I am afraid of cometh unto me.
26 I am not at ease, neither am I quiet, neither have I rest; but trouble cometh.