Study Desk

After this Job opened his mouth and cursed his day.

And Job answered and said:

Let the day perish in which I was born, and the night which said, A man-child has been conceived.

Let that day be darkness! Let not God look on it from above, nor let the light shine on it.

Let darkness and the shadow of death seize upon it. Let a cloud dwell on it. Let all that blackens the day terrify it.

As for that night, let darkness seize it! Let it not be joined to the days of the year. Let it not come into the number of the months.

Behold, let that night be barren; let no joyful voice come in it.

Let those curse it who curse the day, those ready to stir up Leviathan.

Let the stars of its twilight be dark; let it look for light, but have none, let it wait for eyelids of the dawn.

For it did not shut up the doors of my mother's womb; nor did it hide toil from my eyes.

Why did I not die from the womb, come from the womb and expire?

Why did the knees go before me; or why the breasts, that I should suck?

For now I would have lain down and have been quiet; I would have slept. Then I would have been at rest,

with kings and wise men of the earth, who built ruins for themselves;

or with chiefs; they had gold, they filled their houses with silver;

or as a hidden miscarriage, I would not have been, like infants who never saw light.

There the wicked cease from turmoil, and there the weary are at rest;

the prisoners are at ease together, they hear not the voice of the slave driver;

the small and the great, he is there, and the slave free from his master.

Why is light given to the miserable one, and life to him who is bitter in soul;

who is waiting for death, but it is not; and they dig for it more than for treasures?

They are rejoicing to exultation. They are glad when they find the grave.

To a man whose way is hidden, God has made a hedge about him.

For my sighing comes before my food; and my groanings are poured out like the waters.

For the dreadful thing I dreaded has come on me; and that which I feared has come to me.

I am not at ease, nor am I at rest; nor am I quiet; yet turmoil comes.