Job 3 - American Standard Version 2015

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,\par\tab And the night which said,\par\tab There is a man-child conceived.

⁴ Let that day be darkness;\par\tab Let not God from above seek for it,\par\tab Neither let the light shine upon it.

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

⁶ As for that night, let thick darkness seize upon it:\par\tab Let it not rejoice among the days of the year;\par\tab Let it not come into the number of the months.

⁷ Lo, let that night be barren;\par\tab Let no joyful voice come therein.

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

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

¹⁰ Because it shut not up the doors of my {\i mother's} womb,\par\tab Nor hid trouble from mine eyes.

¹¹ Why died I not from the womb?\par\tab Why did I not give up the ghost when my mother bare me?

¹² Why did the knees receive me?\par\tab Or why the breast, that I should suck?

¹³ For now should I have lain down and been quiet;\par\tab I should have slept; then had I been at rest,

¹⁴ With kings and counsellors of the earth,\par\tab Who built up waste places for themselves;

¹⁵ Or with princes that had gold,\par\tab Who filled their houses with silver

¹⁶ Or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been,\par\tab As infants that never saw light.

¹⁷ There the wicked cease from troubling;\par\tab And there the weary are at rest.

¹⁸ There the prisoners are at ease together;\par\tab They hear not the voice of the taskmaster.

¹⁹ The small and the great are there:\par\tab And the servant is free from his master.\par

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

²¹ Who long for death, but it cometh not,\par\tab And dig for it more than for hid treasures;

²² Who rejoice exceedingly,\par\tab And are glad, when they can find the grave?

²³ {\i Why is light given} to a man whose way is hid,\par\tab And whom God hath hedged in?

²⁴ For my sighing cometh before I eat,\par\tab And my groanings are poured out like water.

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

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