Job 3
American Standard Version
3 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 from above seek for it,
Neither let the light shine upon it.
5 Let darkness and [a]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 [b]barren;
Let no joyful voice come therein.
8 Let them curse it that curse the day,
Who are [c]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 my mother bare me?
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,
Who [d]built up waste places for themselves;
15 Or with princes that had gold,
Who filled their houses with silver:
16 Or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been,
As infants that never saw light.
17 There the wicked cease from [e]troubling;
And there the weary are at rest.
18 There the prisoners are at ease together;
They hear not the voice of the taskmaster.
19 The small and the 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 Who [f]long for death, but it cometh not,
And dig for it more than for hid treasures;
22 Who rejoice [g]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 [h]before I eat,
And my [i]groanings are poured out like water.
25 For [j]the thing which I fear cometh upon me,
And that which I am afraid of cometh unto me.
26 I [k]am not at ease, neither am I quiet, neither have I rest;
But trouble cometh.
Footnotes
- Job 3:5 Or, deep darkness (and so elsewhere)
- Job 3:7 Or, solitary
- Job 3:8 Or, skilful
- Job 3:14 Or, built solitary piles
- Job 3:17 Or, raging
- Job 3:21 Hebrew wait.
- Job 3:22 Or, unto exultation
- Job 3:24 Or, like my food
- Job 3:24 Hebrew roarings.
- Job 3:25 Or, the thing which I feared is come etc.
- Job 3:26 Or, was not at ease . . . yet trouble came
Job 3
Living Bible
3 At last Job spoke and cursed the day of his birth.
2-3 “Let the day of my birth be cursed,” he said, “and the night when I was conceived. 4 Let that day be forever forgotten.[a] Let it be lost even to God, shrouded in eternal darkness. 5 Yes, let the darkness claim it for its own, and may a black cloud overshadow it. 6 May it be blotted off the calendar, never again to be counted among the days of the month of that year. 7 Let that night be bleak and joyless. 8 Let those who are experts at cursing curse it.[b] 9 Let the stars of the night disappear. Let it long for light but never see it, never see the morning light. 10 Curse it for its failure to shut my mother’s womb, for letting me be born to come to all this trouble.
11 “Why didn’t I die at birth? 12 Why did the midwife let me live? Why did she nurse me at her breasts? 13 For if only I had died at birth, then I would be quiet now, asleep and at rest, 14-15 along with prime ministers and kings with all their pomp, and wealthy princes whose castles are full of rich treasures. 16 Oh, to have been stillborn!—to have never breathed or seen the light. 17 For there in death the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary are at rest. 18 There even prisoners are at ease, with no brutal jailer to curse them. 19 Both rich and poor alike are there, and the slave is free at last from his master.
20-21 “Oh, why should light and life be given to those in misery and bitterness, who long for death, and it won’t come; who search for death as others search for food or money? 22 What blessed relief when at last they die! 23 Why is a man allowed to be born if God is only going to give him a hopeless life of uselessness and frustration? 24 I cannot eat for sighing; my groans pour out like water. 25 What I always feared has happened to me. 26 I was not fat and lazy, yet trouble struck me down.”
Public Domain (Why are modern Bible translations copyrighted?)
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.