Job 3 - Revised Version with Apocrypha 1895

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

² And Job answered and said:

³ Let the day perish wherein I was born, And the night which said, There is a man child conceived

⁴ Let that day be darkness; Let not God regard it from above, Neither let the light shine upon it

⁵ Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it for their own; Let a cloud dwell upon it; Let all that maketh black the day terrify it.

⁶ As 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

⁷ Lo, let that night be barren; Let no joyful voice come therein

⁸ Let them curse it that curse the day, Who are ready to rouse up leviathan

⁹ Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark: Let it look for light, but have none; Neither let it behold the eyelids of the morning:

¹⁰ Because it shut not up the doors of my mother's womb, Nor hid trouble from mine eyes

¹¹ Why died I not from the womb? Why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly?

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

¹³ For now should I have lain down and been quiet; I should have slept; then had I been at rest:

¹⁴ With kings and counsellors of the earth, Which built up waste places for themselves;

¹⁵ Or with princes that had gold, Who filled their houses with silver:

¹⁶ Or as an hidden untimely birth I had not been; As infants which never saw light

¹⁷ There the wicked cease from troubling; And there the weary be at rest

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

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

²⁰ Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, And life unto the bitter in soul;

²¹ Which long for death, but it cometh not; And dig for it more than for hid treasures;

²² Which 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 hath hedged in?

²⁴ For my sighing cometh before I eat, And my roarings are poured out like water

²⁵ For the thing which I fear cometh upon me, And that which I am afraid of cometh unto me

²⁶ I am not at ease, neither am I quiet, neither have I rest; But trouble cometh.