11. “Why didn’t I die from the womb?Why didn’t I give up the spirit when my mother bore me?
12. Why did the knees receive me?Or why the breast, that I should nurse?
13. For now should I have lain down and been quiet.I should have slept, then I would have been at rest,
14. with kings and counsellors of the earth,who built up waste places for themselves;
15. or with princes who had gold,who filled their houses with silver:
16. or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been,as infants who never saw light.
17. There the wicked cease from troubling.There the weary are at rest.
18. There the prisoners are at ease together.They don’t hear the voice of the taskmaster.
19. The small and the great are there.The servant is free from his master.
20. “Why is light given to him who is in misery,life to the bitter in soul,
21. Who long for death, but it doesn’t come;and dig for it more than for hidden treasures,
22. who rejoice exceedingly,and are glad, when they can find the grave?
23. Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden,whom God has hedged in?