|
| The Book of Job. The Harvard Classics. 1909–14. |
| III |
| [1] | AFTER this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day. |
| [2] | And Job answered and said: |
| [3] | Let the day perish wherein I was born, And the night which said, There is a man-child conceived. |
| [4] | Let that day be darkness; Let not God from above seek for it, Neither let the light shine upon it. |
| [5] | Let darkness and the 1 shadow of death claim it for their own; Let a cloud dwell upon it; Let all that maketh black the day terrify it. |
| [6] | 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. |
| [7] | Lo, let that night be barren; 2 Let no joyful voice come therein. |
| [8] | Let them curse it that curse the day, Who are ready 3 to rouse up leviathan. |
| [9] | 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: |
| [10] | Because it shut not up the doors of my mother’s womb, Nor hid trouble from mine eyes. |
| [11] | Why died I not from the womb? Why did I not give up the ghost when my mother bare me? |
| [12] | Why did the knees receive me? Or why the breasts, that I should suck? |
| [13] | For now should I have lain down and been quiet; I should have slept; then had I been at rest, |
| [14] | With kings and counsellors of the earth, Who built 4 up waste places for themselves; |
| [15] | Or with princes that had gold, Who filled their houses with silver: |
| [16] | Or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been, As infants that never saw light. |
| [17] | There the wicked cease from troubling; 5 And there the weary are at rest, |
| [18] | There the prisoners are at ease together; They hear not the voice of the taskmaster. |
| [19] | The small and the great are there: And the servant is free from his master. |
| [20] | Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, And life unto the bitter in soul; |
| [21] | Who long 6 for death, but it cometh not, And dig for it more than for hid treasures; |
| [22] | Who rejoice exceedingly, 7 And are glad, when they can find the grave? |
| [23] | Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, And whom God hath hedged in? |
| [24] | For my sighing cometh before 8 I eat, And my groanings 9 are poured out like water. |
| [25] | For the 10 thing which I fear cometh upon me, And that which I am afraid of cometh unto me. |
| [26] | I am 11 not at ease, neither am I quiet, neither have I rest; But trouble cometh. |
| Note 1. Or, deep darkness (and so elsewhere). [back] |
| Note 2. Or, solitary. [back] |
| Note 3. Or, skilful. [back] |
| Note 4. Or, built solitary piles. [back] |
| Note 5. Or, raging. [back] |
| Note 6. Heb. wait. [back] |
| Note 7. Or, unto exultation. [back] |
| Note 8. Or, like my food. [back] |
| Note 9. Heb. roarings. [back] |
| Note 10. Or, the thing which I feared is come, &c. [back] |
| Note 11. Or, was not at ease … yet trouble came. [back] |
| CONTENTS · BOOK CONTENTS · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD | ||||
 | ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| Reference · Quotations · Composition · Literature · Government | ||||
| © 2009 Bartleby.com | ||||
