Chapter 3

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

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  And Job answered and said,  

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

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

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

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  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.  

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

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

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  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:  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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