Chapter 3

  After this, Job opened his mouth and cursed his day.  

  And Job answered and said,  

  Let the day perish in which I was born, and the night that said, There is a man child conceived.  

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

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

  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.  

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

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

  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:  

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

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

  Why did the knees meet me? and wherefore the breasts, that I should suck?  

  For now should I have lain down and been quiet; I should have slept: then had I been at rest,  

  With kings and counsellors of the earth, who build desolate places for themselves,  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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