1After this Job opened his mouth, and cursed his day. 2And Job answered and said, 3Let the day perish in which I was born, and the night which said, There is a man-child conceived. 4Let that day be darkness. Let not God from above seek for it, nor let the light shine upon it. 5Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it for their own. Let a cloud dwell upon it. Let blackness come upon it. 6As 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. 7Lo, 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 the twilight of it be dark. Let it look for light, but have none, nor let it behold the eyelids of the morning. 10Because it did not shut up the doors of my [mother's] womb, nor hide trouble from my eyes. 11Why 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 I should 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 waste places for themselves, 15or with rulers who had gold, who filled their houses with silver. 16Or I should have been as a hidden untimely birth, as infants that never saw light. 17There the wicked cease from troubling, and 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. And the servant is free from his master. 20Why is light given to him who 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 can find the grave? 23[Why is light given] to a man whose way is hid, and whom God has hedged in? 24For my sighing comes before I eat, and my groanings are poured out like water. 25For the thing which I fear comes upon me, and that which I am afraid of comes to me. 26I am not at ease, nor am I quiet, neither have I rest, but trouble comes.