Job laments his birth
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After this Job opened his mouth, and cursed the day of his birth.
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“Let the day perish in which I was born, the night which said, ‘There is a boy conceived.’
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Let that day be darkness. Don’t let God from above seek for it, neither let the light shine on it.
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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.
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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.
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Behold, let that night be barren. Let no joyful voice come therein.
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Let them curse it who curse the day, who are ready to rouse up leviathan.
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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,
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because it didn’t shut up the doors of my mother’s womb, nor did it hide trouble from my eyes.
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“Why didn’t I die from the womb? Why didn’t I give up the spirit when my mother bore me?
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Why did the knees receive me? Or why the breast, that I should nurse?
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For now I should have lain down and been quiet. I should have slept, then I would have been at rest,
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with kings and counselors of the earth, who built up waste places for themselves;
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or with princes who had gold, who filled their houses with silver;
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or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been, as infants who never saw light.
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There the wicked cease from troubling. There the weary are at rest.
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There the prisoners are at ease together. They don’t hear the voice of the taskmaster.
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The small and the great are there. The servant is free from his master.
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“Why is light given to him who is in misery, life to the bitter in soul,
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who long for death, but it doesn’t come; and dig for it more than for hidden 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 hidden, whom God has hedged in?
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For my sighing comes before I eat. My groanings are poured out like water.
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For the thing which I fear comes on me, that which I am afraid of comes to me.
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I am not at ease, neither am I quiet, neither do I have rest; but trouble comes.”