Chapter 3

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

  And Job spoke, and said,  

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

  Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it.  

  Let darkness and the shades of death stain it; let a cloud dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it.  

  As for that night, let darkness seize upon it; let it not be joined to the days of the year, let it not come into the number of the months.  

  Lo, let that night be solitary, let no joyful voice come therein.  

  Let them curse it that curse the day, who are ready to raise up their mourning.  

  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:  

  Because it prevented not my birth, nor hid sorrow from my eyes.  

  Why died I not from the womb? why did I not expire at the time of my birth?  

  Why did the knees receive me? or why the breasts that I should be nursed?  

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

  With kings and counselors of the earth, who built desolate places for themselves;  

  Or with princes that had gold, who filled their houses with silver:  

  Or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been; as infants which never saw light.  

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

  There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor.  

  The small and great are there; and the servant is free from his master.  

  Why is light given to him that is in misery, and life to the bitter in soul;  

  Who long for death, but it cometh not; and dig for it more than for hid treasures;  

  Who rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, when they can find the grave?  

  Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged in?  

  For my sighing cometh before I eat, and my roarings are poured out like the waters.  

  For the thing which I greatly feared hath come upon me, and that which I dreaded hath come to me.  

  I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet; yet trouble came.