3 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 that said, There is a man child conceived.

⁴ That day—let it be darkness, let not +God care for it from above, neither let light shine upon it:

⁵ Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it; let clouds dwell upon it; let darkeners of the day terrify it.

⁶ That night—let gloom seize upon it; let it not rejoice among the days of the year; let it not come into the number of the months.

⁷ Behold, let that night be barren; let no joyful sound come therein;

⁸ Let them curse it that curse the day, who are ready to rouse Leviathan;

⁹ Let the stars of its twilight be dark; let it wait for light, and have none, neither let it see the eyelids of the dawn:

¹⁰ Because it shut not up the doors of the womb that bore me, and hid not trouble from mine eyes.

¹¹ Wherefore did I not die from the womb,—come forth from the belly and expire?

¹² Why did the knees meet me? and wherefore 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, who build desolate places for themselves,

¹⁵ Or with princes who had gold, who filled their houses with silver;

¹⁶ Or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been; as infants that have not seen the light.

¹⁷ There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the wearied are at rest.

¹⁸ The prisoners together are at ease; they hear not the voice of the taskmaster.

¹⁹ The small and great are there, and the bondman freed from his master.

²⁰ Wherefore is light given to him that is in trouble, and life to those bitter of soul,

²¹ Who long for death, and it [cometh] not, and dig for it more than for hidden treasures;

²² Who rejoice even exultingly and are glad when they find the grave?—

²³ To the man whose way is hidden, and whom +God hath hedged in?

²⁴ For my sighing cometh before my bread, and my groanings are poured out like the waters.

²⁵ For I feared a fear, and it hath come upon me, and that which I dreaded hath come to me.

²⁶ I was not in safety, neither had I quietness, neither was I at rest, and trouble came.