1After this Job opened his mouth, and cursed his day. 2Job answered:

3"Let the day perish in which I was born, the night which said, 'A man is conceived.'

4Let that day be darkness. Do not let God from above seek for it, neither let the light shine on it.

5Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it for their own. Let a cloud dwell on it. Let the blackness of the day terrify it.

6As for that night, let thick darkness seize on it. Let it not rejoice among the days of the year. Let it not come into the number of the months.

7Look, let that night be barren. Let no joyful voice come in it.

8Let them curse it who curse the day, who are ready to rouse up leviathan.

9Let the stars of its twilight be dark. Let it look for light, but have none, neither let it see the eyelids of the morning,

10because it did not shut up the doors of my mother's womb, nor did it hide trouble from my eyes.

11"Why did I not die from the womb? Why did I not give up the spirit when my mother bore me?

12Why did the knees receive me? Or why the breast, that I should suck?

13For now should I have lain down and been quiet. I should have slept, then I would have been at rest,

14with kings and counselors of the earth, who built up waste places for themselves;

15or with princes who had gold, who filled their houses with silver:

16or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been, as infants who never saw light.

17There the wicked cease from troubling. There the weary are at rest.

18There the prisoners are at ease together. They do not hear the voice of the taskmaster.

19The small and the great are there. The servant is free from his master.

20"Why is light given to him who is in misery, life to the bitter in soul,

21Who long for death, but it doesn't come; and dig for it more than for hidden treasures,

22who rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, when they can find the grave?

23Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, whom God has hedged in?

24For my sighing comes before I eat. My groanings are poured out like water.

25For the thing which I fear comes on me, That which I am afraid of comes to me.

26I am not at ease, neither am I quiet, neither have I rest; but trouble comes."