Job 3:10–13

³¶ If a man beget an hundred children, and live many years, so that the days of his years be many, and his soul be not filled with good, and also that he have no burial; I say, that an untimely birth is better than he.

⁴For he cometh in with vanity, and departeth in darkness, and his name shall be covered with darkness.

⁵Moreover he hath not seen the sun, nor known any thing: this hath more rest than the other.

¹⁸For the Lord had fast closed up all the wombs of the house of Abimelech, because of Sarah Abraham’s wife.

¹⁷Because he slew me not from the womb; or that my mother might have been my grave, and her womb to be always great with me.

⁵But unto Hannah he gave a worthy portion; for he loved Hannah: but the Lord had shut up her womb.

¹⁰Therefore remove sorrow from thy heart, and put away evil from thy flesh: for childhood and youth are vanity.

³¹¶ And when the Lord saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb: but Rachel was barren.

¹MY soul is weary of my life; I will leave my complaint upon myself; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.

²Even to day is my complaint bitter: my stroke is heavier than my groaning.

²Oh that my grief were throughly weighed, and my calamity laid in the balances together!

³For now it would be heavier than the sand of the sea: therefore my words are swallowed up.

¹⁸Wherefore then hast thou brought me forth out of the womb? Oh that I had given up the ghost, and no eye had seen me!

¹⁹I should have been as though I had not been; I should have been carried from the womb to the grave.

³¶ Hearken unto me, O house of Jacob, and all the remnant of the house of Israel, which are borne by me from the belly, which are carried from the womb:

¹⁸Wherefore then hast thou brought me forth out of the womb? Oh that I had given up the ghost, and no eye had seen me!

¹⁹I should have been as though I had not been; I should have been carried from the womb to the grave.

¹⁴Give them, O Lord: what wilt thou give? give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts.

¹⁰¶ Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth! I have neither lent on usury, nor men have lent to me on usury; yet every one of them doth curse me.

¹³For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb.

¹⁴I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.

¹⁵My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.

¹⁶Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.

⁹But thou art he that took me out of the womb: thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother’s breasts.

¹⁰I was cast upon thee from the womb: thou art my God from my mother’s belly.

⁸As a snail which melteth, let every one of them pass away: like the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun.

⁶By thee have I been holden up from the womb: thou art he that took me out of my mother’s bowels: my praise shall be continually of thee.

³And she said, Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and she shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her.

¹²For thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river, and the glory of the Gentiles like a flowing stream: then shall ye suck, ye shall be borne upon her sides, and be dandled upon her knees.

²³And Joseph saw Ephraim’s children of the third generation: the children also of Machir the son of Manasseh were brought up upon Joseph’s knees.

⁴And as for thy nativity, in the day thou wast born thy navel was not cut, neither wast thou washed in water to supple thee; thou wast not salted at all, nor swaddled at all.

⁵None eye pitied thee, to do any of these unto thee, to have compassion upon thee; but thou wast cast out in the open field, to the lothing of thy person, in the day that thou wast born.

¹⁰Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.

¹⁰But man dieth, and wasteth away: yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?

¹¹As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up:

¹²So man lieth down, and riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep.

¹³They spend their days in wealth, and in a moment go down to the grave.

³¶ If a man beget an hundred children, and live many years, so that the days of his years be many, and his soul be not filled with good, and also that he have no burial; I say, that an untimely birth is better than he.

⁴For he cometh in with vanity, and departeth in darkness, and his name shall be covered with darkness.

⁵Moreover he hath not seen the sun, nor known any thing: this hath more rest than the other.

²²A land of darkness, as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as darkness.

¹³If I wait, the grave is mine house: I have made my bed in the darkness.

²⁷Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me.

²³One dieth in his full strength, being wholly at ease and quiet.

²¹And why dost thou not pardon my transgression, and take away mine iniquity? for now shall I sleep in the dust; and thou shalt seek me in the morning, but I shall not be.

⁸The eye of him that hath seen me shall see me no more: thine eyes are upon me, and I am not.

⁹As the cloud is consumed and vanisheth away: so he that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more.

¹⁰He shall return no more to his house, neither shall his place know him any more.