Job curses the day and services of his birth.

3:1 After this Job opened his mouth, and cursed the day of his birth.

3:2 Job answered:

3:3 “Let the day perish in which I was born,
the night which said, ‘There is a boy conceived.’

3:4 Let that day be darkness.
Don’t let God from above seek for it,
neither let the light shine on it.

3:5 Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it for their own.
Let a cloud dwell on it.
Let all that makes black the day terrify it.

3:6 As 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.

3:7 Behold, let that night be barren.
Let no joyful voice come therein.

3:8 Let them curse it who curse the day,
who are ready to rouse up leviathan.

3:9 Let the stars of its twilight be dark.
Let it look for light, but have none,
neither let it see the eyelids of the morning,

3:10 because it didn’t shut up the doors of my mother’s womb,
nor did it hide trouble from my eyes.

3:11 “Why didn’t I die from the womb?
Why didn’t I give up the spirit when my mother bore me?

3:12 Why did the knees receive me?
Or why the breast, that I should suck?

The ease of death.

3:13 For now should I have lain down and been quiet.
I should have slept, then I would have been at rest,

3:14 with kings and counselors of the earth,
who built up waste places for themselves;

3:15 or with princes who had gold,
who filled their houses with silver:

3:16 or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been,
as infants who never saw light.

3:17 There the wicked cease from troubling.
There the weary are at rest.

3:18 There the prisoners are at ease together.
They don’t hear the voice of the taskmaster.

3:19 The small and the great are there.
The servant is free from his master.

He complains of life, because of his anguish.

3:20 “Why is light given to him who is in misery,
life to the bitter in soul,

3:21 Who long for death, but it doesn’t come;
and dig for it more than for hidden treasures,

3:22 who rejoice exceedingly,
and are glad, when they can find the grave?

3:23 Why is light given to a man whose way is hid,
whom God has hedged in?

3:24 For my sighing comes before I eat. My groanings are poured out like water.

3:25 For the thing which I fear comes on me, That which I am afraid of comes to me.

3:26 I am not at ease, neither am I quiet, neither have I rest; but trouble comes.”