17¹ “My spirit is consumed.
My days are extinct,
And the grave is ready for me. ² Surely there are mockers with me.
My eye dwells on their provocation. ³ “Now give a pledge, be collateral for me with yourself.
Who is there who will strike hands with me? ⁴ For you have hidden their heart from understanding,
Therefore you shall not exalt them. ⁵ He who denounces his friends for a prey,
Even the eyes of his children shall fail. ⁶ “But he has made me a byword of the people.
They spit in my face. ⁷ My eye also is dim by reason of sorrow.
All my members are as a shadow. ⁸ Upright men shall be astonished at this.
The innocent shall stir up himself against the godless. ⁹ Yet shall the righteous hold on his way.
He who has clean hands shall grow stronger and stronger.

¹⁰ But as for you all, come on now again;
I shall not find a wise man among you. ¹¹ My days are past, my plans are broken off,
as are the thoughts of my heart. ¹² They change the night into day,
saying ‘The light is near’ in the presence of darkness. ¹³ If I look for Sheol as my house,
if I have spread my couch in the darkness, ¹⁴ If I have said to corruption, ‘You are my father;’
to the worm, ‘My mother,’ and ‘my sister;’ ¹⁵ where then is my hope?
as for my hope, who shall see it? ¹⁶ Shall it go down with me to the gates of Sheol,
or descend together into the dust?”

Job Bewails His Birth

3¹ After this Job opened his mouth, and cursed the day of his birth. ² Job answered: ³ “Let the day perish in which I was born,
the night which said, ‘There is a boy conceived.’ ⁴ Let that day be darkness.
Don’t let God from above seek for it,
neither let the light shine on it. ⁵ Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it for their own.
Let a cloud dwell on it.
Let all that makes black the day terrify it. ⁶ 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. ⁷ Behold, let that night be barren.
Let no joyful voice come therein. ⁸ Let them curse it who curse the day,
who are ready to rouse up leviathan. ⁹ 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, ¹⁰ because it didn’t shut up the doors of my mother’s womb,
nor did it hide trouble from my eyes.

¹¹ “Why didn’t I die from the womb?
Why didn’t I give up the spirit when my mother bore me? ¹² Why did the knees receive me?
Or why the breast, that I should suck? ¹³ For now should I have lain down and been quiet.
I should have slept, then I would have been at rest, ¹⁴ with kings and counselors of the earth,
who built up waste places for themselves; ¹⁵ or with princes who had gold,
who filled their houses with silver: ¹⁶ or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been,
as infants who never saw light. ¹⁷ There the wicked cease from troubling.
There the weary are at rest. ¹⁸ There the prisoners are at ease together.
They don’t hear the voice of the taskmaster. ¹⁹ The small and the great are there.
The servant is free from his master.

²⁰ “Why is light given to him who is in misery,
life to the bitter in soul, ²¹ Who long for death, but it doesn’t come;
and dig for it more than for hidden treasures, ²² who rejoice exceedingly,
and are glad, when they can find the grave? ²³ Why is light given to a man whose way is hid,
whom God has hedged in? ²⁴ For my sighing comes before I eat.
My groanings are poured out like water. ²⁵ For the thing which I fear comes on me,
That which I am afraid of comes to me. ²⁶ I am not at ease, neither am I quiet, neither have I rest;
but trouble comes.”