| 1 | After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day. |
| 2 | And Job answered and said: |
| 3 | Let the day perish wherein I was born, And the night which said, There is a man-child conceived. |
| 4 | Let that day be darkness; Let not God from above seek for it, Neither let the light shine upon it. |
| 5 | Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it for their own; Let a cloud dwell upon it; Let all that maketh black the day terrify it. |
| 6 | 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. |
| 7 | Lo, let that night be barren; Let no joyful voice come therein. |
| 8 | Let them curse it that curse the day, Who are ready to rouse up leviathan. |
| 9 | 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: |
| 10 | Because it shut not up the doors of my [mother's] womb, Nor hid trouble from mine eyes. |
| 11 | Why died I not from the womb? Why did I not give up the ghost when my mother bare me? |
| 12 | Why did the knees receive me? Or why the breast, that I should suck? |
| 13 | For now should I have lain down and been quiet; I should have slept; then had I been at rest, |
| 14 | With kings and counsellors of the earth, Who built up waste places for themselves; |
| 15 | Or with princes that had gold, Who filled their houses with silver: |
| 16 | Or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been, As infants that never saw 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 servant is free from his master. |
| 20 | Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, And life unto the bitter in soul; |
| 21 | Who long for death, but it cometh not, And dig for it more than for hid treasures; |
| 22 | Who rejoice exceedingly, And are glad, when they can find the grave? |
| 23 | [Why is light given] to a man whose way is hid, And whom God hath hedged in? |
| 24 | For my sighing cometh before I eat, And my groanings are poured out like water. |
| 25 | For the thing which I fear cometh upon me, And that which I am afraid of cometh unto me. |
| 26 | I am not at ease, neither am I quiet, neither have I rest; But trouble cometh. |