Book of Job, Chapter 3
Job 3 ASV - American Standard VersionChapter 3 of Job—American Standard Version (ASV)
- ¶ After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day.
- ¶ And Job answered and said:
- ¶ Let the day perish wherein I was born,
¶ And the night which said, There is a man-child conceived. - ¶ Let that day be darkness;
¶ Let not God from above seek for it,
¶ Neither let the light shine upon it. - ¶ Let darkness and [a]the shadow of death claim it for their own;
¶ Let a cloud dwell upon it;
¶ Let all that maketh black the day terrify it. - ¶ 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. - ¶ Lo, let that night be [b]barren;
¶ Let no joyful voice come therein. - ¶ Let them curse it that curse the day,
¶ Who are [c]ready to rouse up leviathan. - ¶ 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: - ¶ Because it shut not up the doors of my mother’s womb,
¶ Nor hid trouble from mine eyes. - ¶ Why died I not from the womb?
¶ Why did I not give up the ghost when my mother bare me? - ¶ Why did the knees receive me?
¶ Or why the breasts, that I should suck? - ¶ For now should I have lain down and been quiet;
¶ I should have slept; then had I been at rest, - ¶ With kings and counsellors of the earth,
¶ Who [d]built up waste places for themselves; - ¶ Or with princes that had gold,
¶ Who filled their houses with silver: - ¶ Or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been,
¶ As infants that never saw light. - ¶ There the wicked cease from [e]troubling;
¶ And there the weary are at rest. - ¶ There the prisoners are at ease together;
¶ They hear not the voice of the taskmaster. - ¶ The small and the great are there:
¶ And the servant is free from his master. - ¶ Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery,
¶ And life unto the bitter in soul; - ¶ Who [f]long for death, but it cometh not,
¶ And dig for it more than for hid treasures; - ¶ Who rejoice [g]exceedingly,
¶ And are glad, when they can find the grave? - ¶ Why is light given to a man whose way is hid,
¶ And whom God hath hedged in? - ¶ For my sighing cometh [h]before I eat,
¶ And my [i]groanings are poured out like water. - ¶ For [j]the thing which I fear cometh upon me,
¶ And that which I am afraid of cometh unto me. - ¶ I [k]am not at ease, neither am I quiet, neither have I rest;
¶ But trouble cometh.
FOOTNOTES
- ^ Or, deep darkness (and so elsewhere)
- ^ Or, solitary
- ^ Or, skilful
- ^ Or, built solitary piles
- ^ Or, raging
- ^ Hebrew wait.
- ^ Or, unto exultation
- ^ Or, like my food
- ^ Hebrew roarings.
- ^ Or, the thing which I feared is come etc.
- ^ Or, was not at ease . . . yet trouble came
Read Job Chapter 3 in other Bible versions:
