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- After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day.
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- And Job spoke, and said:
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- Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night wherein it was said: "A man-child is brought forth."
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- Let that day be darkness;
let not God inquire after it from above, neither let the light shine upon it.
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- Let 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.
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- As 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.
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- Lo, let that night be desolate;
let no joyful voice come therein.
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- Let them curse it that curse the day, who are ready to rouse up leviathan.
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- Let 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;
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- Because it shut not up the doors of my mother"s womb, nor hid trouble from mine eyes.
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- Why died I not from the womb?
Why did I not perish at birth?
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- Why did the knees receive me?
And wherefore the breasts, that I should suck?
- 13
- For now should I have lain still and been quiet;
I should have slept;
then had I been at rest -
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- With kings and counsellors of the earth, who built up waste places for themselves;
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- Or with princes that had gold, who filled their houses with silver;
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- Or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been;
as infants that never saw light.
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- There the wicked cease from troubling;
and there the weary are at rest.
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- There the prisoners are at ease together;
they hear not the voice of the taskmaster.
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- The small and great are there alike;
and the servant is free from his master.
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- Wherewith is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul -
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- Who long for death, but it cometh not;
and dig for it more than for hid treasures;
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- Who rejoice unto exultation, and are glad, when they can find the grave? -
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- To a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged in?
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- For my sighing cometh instead of my food, and my roarings are poured out like water.
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- For the thing which I did fear is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of hath overtaken me.
- 26
- I was not at ease, neither was I quiet, neither had I rest;
but trouble came.
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