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.”