Chapter 3

  After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day.  

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  And Job answered and said:  

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  Let the day perish wherein I was born, And the night which said, There is a man-child conceived.  

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

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

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  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.  

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  Lo, let that night be barren; Let no joyful voice come therein.  

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

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  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:  

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  Because it shut not up the doors of my [mother's] womb, Nor hid trouble from mine eyes.  

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

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  Why did the knees receive me? Or why the breast, that I should suck?  

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

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

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  Or with princes that had gold, Who filled their houses with silver:  

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

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  There the wicked cease from troubling; And there the weary are at rest.  

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  There the prisoners are at ease together; They hear not the voice of the taskmaster.  

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

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

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

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  Who rejoice exceedingly, And are glad, when they can find the grave?  

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  [Why is light given] to a man whose way is hid, And whom God hath hedged in?  

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

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

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  I am not at ease, neither am I quiet, neither have I rest; But trouble cometh.  

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