1 After this opened Job his mouth, and curseth 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 from above seek for it,
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 breath when my mother bare me?
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,
Who built up waste 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 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 hear not the voice of the taskmaster.
19 The small and the great are there;
And the servant is free from his master.