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.