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Job 3

¹After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth.

²And Job said:

³"Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night which said, ` man-child is conceived.'

⁴Let that day be darkness! May God above not seek it, nor light shine upon it.

⁵Let gloom and deep darkness claim it. Let clouds dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it.

⁶That 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.

⁷Yea, let that night be barren; let no joyful cry be heard in it.

⁸Let those curse it who curse the day, who are skilled to rouse up Levi'athan.

⁹Let the stars of its dawn be dark; let it hope for light, but have none, nor see the eyelids of the morning;

¹⁰because 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 forth from the womb and expire?

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

¹³For then I should have lain down and been quiet; I should have slept; then I should have been at rest,

¹⁴with kings and counselors of the earth who rebuilt ruins for themselves,

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

¹⁶Or why was I not as a hidden untimely birth, as infants that never see the light?

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

¹⁸There the prisoners are at ease together; they hear not the voice of the taskmaster.

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

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

²¹who long for death, but it comes not, and dig for it more than for hid treasures;

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

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

²⁴For my sighing comes as my bread, and my groanings are poured out like water.

²⁵For the thing that I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me.

²⁶I am not at ease, nor am I quiet; I have no rest; but trouble comes."

Job 3 (RSV)

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Job

Chapter 3

3 of 42