³ “Let the day perish in which I was born,
    the night which said, ‘There is a boy conceived.’
⁴ Let that day be darkness.
    Don’t let God from above seek for it,
    neither let the light shine on it.
⁵ Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it for their own.
    Let a cloud dwell on it.
    Let all that makes the day black terrify it.
⁶ As for that night, let thick darkness seize on it.
    Let it not rejoice among the days of the year.
    Let it not come into the number of the months.
⁷ Behold, let that night be barren.
    Let no joyful voice come therein.
⁸ Let them curse it who curse the day,
    who are ready to rouse up leviathan.
⁹ Let the stars of its twilight be dark.
    Let it look for light, but have none,
    neither let it see the eyelids of the morning,
¹⁰ because it didn’t shut up the doors of my mother’s womb,
    nor did it hide trouble from my eyes.

¹¹ “Why didn’t I die from the womb?
    Why didn’t I give up the spirit when my mother bore me?
¹² Why did the knees receive me?
    Or why the breast, that I should nurse?
¹³ For now I should have lain down and been quiet.
    I should have slept, then I would have been at rest,
¹⁴ with kings and counselors of the earth,
    who built up waste places for themselves;
¹⁵ or with princes who had gold,
    who filled their houses with silver:
¹⁶ or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been,
    as infants who never saw light.
¹⁷ There the wicked cease from troubling.
    There the weary are at rest.
¹⁸ There the prisoners are at ease together.
    They don’t hear the voice of the taskmaster.
¹⁹ The small and the great are there.
    The servant is free from his master.

²⁰ “Why is light given to him who is in misery,
    life to the bitter in soul,
²¹ Who long for death, but it doesn’t come;
    and dig for it more than for hidden treasures,
²² who rejoice exceedingly,
    and are glad, when they can find the grave?
²³ Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden,
    whom God has hedged in?
²⁴ For my sighing comes before I eat.
    My groanings are poured out like water.
²⁵ For the thing which I fear comes on me,
    That which I am afraid of comes to me.
²⁶ I am not at ease, neither am I quiet, neither do I have rest;
    but trouble comes.”