1. After this Job opened his mouth, and cursed his day of birth.
2. And Job spoke, and said,
3. Let the day perish in which I was born, and the night in which it was 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 stain it; let a cloud dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it.
6. 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.
7. Lo, let that night be solitary, let no joyful voice come therein.
8. Let them curse it who curse the day, who are ready to lift up their mourning.
9. Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark; let it look for light, but have none; neither let it see the dawning of the day:
10. Because it did not shut up the doors of my mother's womb, nor hid sorrow from my eyes.
11. Why did I not die from the womb? why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly?
12. Why were the knees prepared for me? or why the breasts that I should suck?
13. For now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept: then had I been at rest,
14. With kings and counselors of the earth, which built desolate places for themselves;
15. Or with princes that had gold, who filled their houses with silver:
16. Or as a hidden untimely birth I would not have 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 rest together; they do not hear the voice of the oppressor.
19. The small and great are there; and the servant is free from his master.
20. Why is light given to him that is in misery, and life to the bitter in soul;
21. Which long for death, but it does not come; 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 has hedged in?
24. For my sighing comes before I eat, and my roarings are poured out like waters.
25. For the thing which I greatly feared has come upon me, and that which I was afraid of has come to me.
26. I was not in safety, neither did I have rest, neither was I quiet; yet trouble came.