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Job 3 :: English Standard Version (ESV)

Job Laments His Birth

Job 3:1After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth.
Job 3:2And Job said:
Job 3:3“Let the day perish on which I was born,
and the night that said,
‘A man is conceived.’
Job 3:4Let that day be darkness!
May God above not seek it,
nor light shine upon it.
Job 3:5Let gloom and deep darkness claim it.
Let clouds dwell upon it;
let the blackness of the day terrify it.
Job 3:6That 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.
Job 3:7Behold, let that night be barren;
let no joyful cry enter it.
Job 3:8Let those curse it who curse the day,
who are ready to rouse up Leviathan.
Job 3:9Let the stars of its dawn be dark;
let it hope for light, but have none,
nor see the eyelids of the morning,
Job 3:10because it did not shut the doors of my mother’s womb,
nor hide trouble from my eyes.
Job 3:11“Why did I not die at birth,
come out from the womb and expire?
Job 3:12Why did the knees receive me?
Or why the breasts, that I should nurse?
Job 3:13For then I would have lain down and been quiet;
I would have slept; then I would have been at rest,
Job 3:14with kings and counselors of the earth
who rebuilt ruins for themselves,
Job 3:15or with princes who had gold,
who filled their houses with silver.
Job 3:16Or why was I not as a hidden stillborn child,
as infants who never see the light?
Job 3:17There the wicked cease from troubling,
and there the weary are at rest.
Job 3:18There the prisoners are at ease together;
they hear not the voice of the taskmaster.
Job 3:19The small and the great are there,
and the slave is free from his master.
Job 3:20“Why is light given to him who is in misery,
and life to the bitter in soul,
Job 3:21who long for death, but it comes not,
and dig for it more than for hidden treasures,
Job 3:22who rejoice exceedingly
and are glad when they find the grave?
Job 3:23Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden,
whom God has hedged in?
Job 3:24For my sighing comes instead of[fn] my bread,
and my groanings are poured out like water.
Job 3:25For the thing that I fear comes upon me,
and what I dread befalls me.
Job 3:26I am not at ease, nor am I quiet;
I have no rest, but trouble comes.”
ESV Footnotes
Or like; Hebrew before
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Job Chapter 3 — Additional Translations: