Re: A Poem To My Aborted Child, by Anonymous

Job 3 Authorized (King James) Version (AKJV)

3 After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day. 2 And Job spake, and said,

3
Let the day perish wherein I was born,
and the night in which it was said,
There is a man child conceived.
4
Let that day be darkness;
let not God regard it from above,
neither let the light shine upon it.
5
Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it;
let a cloud dwell upon it;
let the blackness of the day terrify it.
6
As for that night, let darkness seize upon it;
let it not be joined unto the days of the year,
let it not come into the number of the months.
7
Lo, let that night be solitary,
let no joyful voice come therein.
8
Let them curse it that curse the day,
who are ready to raise up their mourning.
9
Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark;
let it look for light, but have none;
neither let it see the dawning of the day:
10
because it shut not up the doors of my mother’s womb,
nor hid sorrow from mine eyes.

11
Why died I not from the womb?
why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly?
12
Why did the knees prevent me?
or why the breasts that I should suck?
13
For now should I have lain still and been quiet,
I should have slept:
then had I been at rest,
14
with kings and counsellors of the earth,
which built desolate places for themselves;
15
or with princes that had gold,
who filled their houses with silver:
16
or as an hidden untimely birth I had not been;
as infants which never saw light.
17
There the wicked cease from troubling;
and there the weary be at rest.
18
There the prisoners rest together;
they hear not the voice of the oppressor.
19
The small and 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
which long for death, but it cometh not;
and dig for it more than for hid treasures;
22
which rejoice exceedingly, 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 I eat,
and my roarings are poured out like the waters.
25
For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me,
and that which I was afraid of is come unto me.
26
I was not in safety, neither had I rest,
neither was I quiet; yet trouble came.
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