1 After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day.
2 And Job spoke, and said,
3 Let the day perish on which I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a male 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 stain 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 solitary, let no joyful voice come into it.
8 Let them curse it that curse the day, who are ready to arouse leviathan.
9 Let the stars of its twilight be dark; let it look for light, but have none; neither let it see the dawning of the day:
10 Because it shut not up the doors of my mother's womb, nor hid sorrow from my eyes.
11 Why died I not from the womb? why did I not expire when I came out of the womb?
12 Why did the knees receive me? or why the breasts that I should nurse?
13 For now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept: then would I have been at rest,
14 With kings and counselors of the earth, who 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 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 hear not the voice of the oppressor.
19 The small and great are there; and the servant is free from his master.
20 Therefore 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 dig for it more than for hidden 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 the waters.
25 For the thing which I greatly feared has come upon me, and that which I was afraid of has come unto me.
26 I was not at ease, neither had I quiet, neither was I at rest; yet trouble came.