1. AFTER THIS, Job opened his mouth and cursed his day (birthday).
2. And Job said,
3. Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night which announced, There is a man-child conceived.
4. Let that day be darkness! May not God above regard it, nor light shine upon it.
5. Let gloom and deep darkness claim it for their own; let a cloud dwell upon it; let all that blackens the day terrify it (the day that I was born).
6. As for that night, let thick darkness seize it; let it not rejoice among the days of the year; let it not come into the number of the months.
7. Yes, let that night be solitary and barren; let no joyful voice come into it.
8. Let those curse it who curse the day, who are skilled in rousing up Leviathan.
9. Let the stars of the early dawn of that day be dark; let [the morning] look in vain for the light, nor let it behold the day's dawning,
10. Because it shut not the doors of my mother's womb nor hid sorrow and trouble from my eyes.
11. Why was I not stillborn? Why did I not give up the ghost when my mother bore me?
12. Why did the knees receive me? Or why the breasts, that I should suck?
13. For then would I have lain down and been quiet; I would have slept; then would I have been at rest [in death]
14. With kings and counselors of the earth, who built up [now] desolate ruins for themselves,
15. Or with princes who had gold, who filled their houses with silver.
16. Or [why] was I not a miscarriage, hidden and put away, as infants who never saw light?