Job Laments His Birth

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

²Job said:

³“Let the day perish in which I was born[#Job 10:18–19; Jer 20:14–18]

and the night in which it was said, ‘A male child is conceived.’

⁴As for that day, let it be darkness;

let God above not regard it;

and let not light shine upon it.

⁵Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it;[#Job 10:21–22; Ps 23:4]

let a cloud settle on it;

let the blackness of the day terrify it.

⁶As for that night, let darkness capture it;

let it not rejoice among the days of the year;

let it not come into the number of the months.

⁷Yes, as for that night, let it be barren!

Let no joyful cry come into it!

⁸Let them curse it who curse any day,

those who are prepared to rouse Leviathan.

⁹Let its morning stars be dark;

let it look for light, but have none;

let it not see the rays of dawn,

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?

Why did I not expire when I came out of the womb?

¹²Why did her knees receive me?[#Ge 30:3]

And why her breasts that I should nurse?

¹³For now I would be lying down and would be at peace;

I would have slept; then there would be rest for me,

¹⁴with kings and counselors of the earth,

who built ruins for themselves,

¹⁵or with princes who had gold,

who filled their houses with silver.

¹⁶Or why was I not hidden like a stillborn child,[#1Co 15:8]

like infants who never saw light?

¹⁷There the wicked will have stopped causing trouble,

and there the exhausted will rest.

¹⁸Captives will relax together;

they do not hear the voice of the oppressor.

¹⁹The small and great, they are there,

and the servant is free from his master.

²⁰“Why is light given to the miserable,

and life unto the bitter in soul,

²¹who look for death, but it is not there;[#Rev 9:6]

and they search for it more than for hidden treasures;

²²who rejoice exceedingly,

and they are glad when they find the grave?

²³And why is light given to a man

whose way is hidden,

whom God has hedged in?

²⁴For my sighing comes before I eat,

and my groaning pours forth like the waters.

²⁵For the thing which I greatly feared has happened to me,

and that which I dreaded has come to me.

²⁶I am not at peace; I have no quiet,

I cannot rest, and turmoil has come.”