After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day.
And Job answered and said:
Let the day perish wherein I was born,
And the night which said, There is a man-child conceived.
Let that day be darkness;
Let not God from above seek for it,
Neither let the light shine upon it.
Let darkness and {Or, deep darkness (and so elsewhere)}the shadow of death claim it for their own;
Let a cloud dwell upon it;
Let all that maketh black the day terrify it.
As for that night, let thick darkness seize upon it:
Let it not rejoice among the days of the year;
Let it not come into the number of the months.
Lo, let that night be {Or, solitary}barren;
Let no joyful voice come therein.
Let them curse it that curse the day,
Who are {Or, skilful}ready to rouse up leviathan.
Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark:
Let it look for light, but have none;
Neither let it behold the eyelids of the morning:
Because it shut not up the doors of my mother's womb,
Nor hid trouble from mine eyes.
Why died I not from the womb?
Why did I not give up the ghost when my mother bare me?
Why did the knees receive me?
Or why the breast, 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 {Or, built solitary piles}built up waste 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 that never saw light.
There the wicked cease from {Or, raging}troubling;
And there the weary are at rest.
There the prisoners are at ease together;
They hear not the voice of the taskmaster.
The small and the great are there:
And the servant is free from his master.
Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery,
And life unto the bitter in soul;
Who {Hebrew: wait.}long for death, but it cometh not,
And dig for it more than for hid treasures;
Who rejoice {Or, unto exultation}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 {Or, like my food}before I eat,
And my {Hebrew: roarings.}groanings are poured out like water.
For {Or, the thing which I feared is come &c.}the thing which I fear cometh upon me,
And that which I am afraid of cometh unto me.
I {Or, was not at ease…yet trouble came}am not at ease, neither am I quiet, neither have I rest;
But trouble cometh.