2¹ Again it happened on the day when the God’s sons came to present themselves before Yahweh, that Satan came also among them to present himself before Yahweh. ² Yahweh said to Satan, “Where have you come from?”

Satan answered Yahweh, and said, “From going back and forth in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.” ³ Yahweh said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? For there is none like him in the earth, a blameless and an upright man, one who fears God, and turns away from evil. He still maintains his integrity, although you incited me against him, to ruin him without cause.” ⁴ Satan answered Yahweh, and said, “Skin for skin. Yes, all that a man has he will give for his life. ⁵ But put forth your hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will renounce you to your face.” ⁶ Yahweh said to Satan, “Behold, he is in your hand. Only spare his life.”

⁷ So Satan went forth from the presence of Yahweh, and struck Job with painful sores from the sole of his foot to his head. ⁸ He took for himself a potsherd to scrape himself with, and he sat among the ashes. ⁹ Then his wife said to him, “Do you still maintain your integrity? Renounce God, and die.” ¹⁰ But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. What? Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?”

In all this Job didn’t sin with his lips.

¹¹ Now when Job’s three friends heard of all this evil that had come on him, they each came from his own place: Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite, and they made an appointment together to come to sympathize with him and to comfort him. ¹² When they lifted up their eyes from a distance, and didn’t recognize him, they raised their voices, and wept; and they each tore his robe, and sprinkled dust on their heads toward the sky. ¹³ So they sat down with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spoke a word to him, for they saw that his grief was very great.

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.”