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- After this, Job opened his mouth and cursed his day.
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- And Job answered and said,
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- Let the day perish in which I was born, and the night that said, There is a man child conceived.
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- That day — let it be darkness, let not +God care for it from above, neither let light shine upon it:
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- Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it;
let clouds dwell upon it; let darkeners of the day terrify it.
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- That night — let gloom 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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- Behold, let that night be barren;
let no joyful sound come therein;
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- Let them curse it that curse the day, who are ready to rouse Leviathan;
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- Let the stars of its twilight be dark;
let it wait for light, and have none, neither let it see the eyelids of the dawn:
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- Because it shut not up the doors of the womb that bore me, and hid not trouble from mine eyes.
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- Wherefore did I not die from the womb, — come forth from the belly and expire?
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- Why did the knees meet me?
and wherefore the breasts, that I should suck?
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- For now should I have lain down 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 build desolate places for themselves,
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- Or with princes who 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 have not seen the light.
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- There the wicked cease from troubling;
and there the wearied are at rest.
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- The prisoners together are at ease;
they hear not the voice of the taskmaster.
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- The small and great are there, and the bondman freed from his master.
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- Wherefore is light given to him that is in trouble, and life to those bitter of soul,
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- Who long for death, and it [cometh] not, and dig for it more than for hidden treasures;
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- Who rejoice even exultingly and are glad when they find the grave?
—
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- To the man whose way is hidden, and whom +God hath hedged in?
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- For my sighing cometh before my bread, and my groanings are poured out like the waters.
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- For I feared a fear, and it hath come upon me, and that which I dreaded hath come to me.
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- I was not in safety, neither had I quietness, neither was I at rest, and trouble came.
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