American Standard Version of 1901
Versliste
Wherefore then hast thou brought me forth out of the womb?I had given up the ghost, and no eye had seen me.
I should have been as though I had not been;I should have been carried from the womb to the grave.
Are not my days few? {Another reading is, let him cease, and leave me alone.}cease then,And let me alone, that I may {Hebrew: brighten up.}take comfort a little,
Before I go whence I shall not return,Even to the land of darkness and of the shadow of death;
The land dark as {Hebrew: thick darkness.}midnight,The land of the shadow of death, without any order,And where the light is as {Hebrew: thick darkness.}midnight.
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.
But thou art he that took me out of the womb;Thou didst make me trust when I was upon my mother's breasts.
Wherefore I praised the dead that have been long dead more than the living that are yet alive;
yea, {Or, better than they both is he that &c.}better than them both did I esteem him that hath not yet been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under the sun.
Jehovah, make me to know mine end,And the measure of my days, what it is;Let me know how frail I am.
Hear my prayer, O Jehovah, and give ear unto my cry;Hold not thy peace at my tears:For I am a stranger with thee,A sojourner, as all my fathers were.
And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God {Or, was brooding upon}moved upon the face of the waters.