Job 3
Job Laments His Birth
[1] After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. [2] And Job said:
[3] “Let the day perish on which I was born,
and the night that said,
‘A man is conceived.’
[4] Let that day be darkness!
May God above not seek it,
nor light shine upon it.
[5] Let gloom and deep darkness claim it.
Let clouds dwell upon it;
let the blackness of the day terrify it.
[6] That night—let thick darkness seize it!
Let it not rejoice among the days of the year;
let it not come into the number of the months.
[7] Behold, let that night be barren;
let no joyful cry enter it.
[8] Let those curse it who curse the day,
who are ready to rouse up Leviathan.
[9] Let the stars of its dawn be dark;
let it hope for light, but have none,
nor see the eyelids of the morning,
[10] because it did not shut the doors of my mother’s womb,
nor hide trouble from my eyes.
[11] “Why did I not die at birth,
come out from the womb and expire?
[12] Why did the knees receive me?
Or why the breasts, that I should nurse?
[13] For then I would have lain down and been quiet;
I would have slept; then I would have been at rest,
[14] with kings and counselors of the earth
who rebuilt ruins for themselves,
[15] or with princes who had gold,
who filled their houses with silver.
[16] Or why was I not as a hidden stillborn child,
as infants who never see the 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 slave is free from his master.
[20] “Why is light given to him who is in misery,
and life to the bitter in soul,
[21] who long for death, but it comes not,
and dig for it more than for hidden treasures,
[22] who rejoice exceedingly
and are glad when they find the grave?
[23] Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden,
whom God has hedged in?
[24] For my sighing comes instead of my bread,
and my groanings are poured out like water.
[25] For the thing that I fear comes upon me,
and what I dread befalls me.
[26] I am not at ease, nor am I quiet;
I have no rest, but trouble comes.” (ESV)
