Job 3-4

Job 3

¹After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day.

²And Job answered and said:

³Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night which said, There is a man child conceived.

⁴Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it.

⁵Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it for their own; let a cloud dwell upon it; let all that maketh black the day terrify it.

⁶As for that night, let thick darkness seize upon it: let it not rejoice among the days of the year; let it not come into the number of the months.

⁷Lo, let that night be barren; let no joyful voice come therein.

⁸Let them curse it that curse the day, who are ready to rouse up leviathan.

⁹Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark: let it look for light, but have none; neither let it behold the eyelids of the morning:

¹⁰Because it shut not up the doors of my mother’s womb, nor hid trouble from mine eyes.

¹¹Why died I not from the womb? why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly?

¹²Why did the knees receive me? or why the breasts, that I should suck?

¹³For now should I have lain down and been quiet; I should have slept; then had I been at rest:

¹⁴With kings and counsellors of the earth, which built up waste places for themselves;

¹⁵Or with princes that had gold, who filled their houses with silver:

¹⁶Or as an hidden untimely birth I had not been; as infants which never saw light.

¹⁷There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest.

¹⁸There the prisoners are at ease together; they hear not the voice of the taskmaster.

¹⁹The small and great are there; and the servant is free from his master.

²⁰Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul;

²¹Which long for death, but it cometh not; and dig for it more than for hid treasures;

²²Which rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, when they can find the grave?

²³Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged in?

²⁴For my sighing cometh before I eat, and my roarings are poured out like water.

²⁵For the thing which I fear cometh upon me, and that which I am afraid of cometh unto me.

²⁶I am not at ease, neither am I quiet, neither have I rest; but trouble cometh.

Job 4

¹Then answered Eliphaz the Temanite, and said,

²If one assay to commune with thee, wilt thou be grieved? but who can withhold himself from speaking?

³Behold, thou hast instructed many, and thou hast strengthened the weak hands.

⁴Thy words have upholden him that was falling, and thou hast confirmed the feeble knees.

⁵But now it is come unto thee, and thou faintest; it toucheth thee, and thou art troubled.

⁶Is not thy fear of God thy confidence, and thy hope the integrity of thy ways?

⁷Remember, I pray thee, who ever perished, being innocent? or where were the upright cut off?

⁸According as I have seen, they that plow iniquity, and sow trouble, reap the same.

⁹By the breath of God they perish, and by the blast of his anger are they consumed.

¹⁰The roaring of the lion, and the voice of the fierce lion, and the teeth of the young lions, are broken.

¹¹The old lion perisheth for lack of prey, and the whelps of the lioness are scattered abroad.

¹²Now a thing was secretly brought to me, and mine ear received a whisper thereof.

¹³In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth on men,

¹⁴Fear came upon me, and trembling, which made all my bones to shake.

¹⁵Then a spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up.

¹⁶It stood still, but I could not discern the appearance thereof; a form was before mine eyes: there was silence, and I heard a voice, saying,

¹⁷Shall mortal man be more just than God? shall a man be more pure than his Maker?

¹⁸Behold, he putteth no trust in his servants; and his angels he chargeth with folly:

¹⁹How much more them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, which are crushed before the moth!

²⁰Betwixt morning and evening they are destroyed: they perish for ever without any regarding it.

²¹Is not their tent-cord plucked up within them? they die, and that without wisdom.