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 breast, 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 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 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 long for death, but it cometh not, And dig for it more than for hid treasures;
Who rejoice 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 before I eat, And my groanings are poured out like water.
For the thing which I fear cometh upon me, And that which I am afraid of cometh unto me.
I am not at ease, neither am I quiet, neither have I rest; But trouble cometh.
So I hated life, because the work that is wrought under the sun was grievous unto me; for all is vanity and a striving after wind.
Cursed be the day wherein I was born: let not the day wherein my mother bare me be blessed.
Cursed be the man who brought tidings to my father, saying, A man-child is born unto thee; making him very glad.
And let that man be as the cities which Jehovah overthrew, and repented not: and let him hear a cry in the morning, and shouting at noontime;
because he slew me not from the womb; and so my mother would have been my grave, and her womb always great.
Wherefore came I forth out of the womb to see labor and sorrow, that my days should be consumed with shame?