Job - Chapter 3 | English Standard Version

  • 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."
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