¹⁸ Why then did you make me come out of my mother's body? It would have been better for me to have taken my last breath, and for no eye to have seen me,

¹⁴ A curse on the day of my birth: let there be no blessing on the day when my mother had me.

¹⁵ A curse on the man who gave the news to my father, saying, You have a male child; making him very glad.

¹⁶ May that man be like the towns overturned by the Lord without mercy: let a cry for help come to his ears in the morning, and the sound of war in the middle of the day;

¹⁷ Because he did not put me to death before my birth took place: so my mother's body would have been my last resting-place, and she would have been with child for ever.

¹⁸ Why did I come from my mother's body to see pain and sorrow, so that my days might be wasted with shame?

¹⁰ Because it did not keep the doors of my mother's body shut, so that trouble might be veiled from my eyes.

¹¹ Why did death not take me when I came out of my mother's body, why did I not, when I came out, give up my last breath?

²⁰ But the eyes of the evil-doers will be wasting away; their way of flight is gone, and their only hope is the taking of their last breath.

¹⁰ But man comes to his death and is gone: he gives up his spirit, and where is he?

¹⁰ Sorrow is mine, my mother, because you have given birth to me, a cause of fighting and argument in all the earth! I have not made men my creditors and I am not in debt to any, but every one of them is cursing me.

²⁴ The Son of man goes, even as the Writings say of him: but a curse is on that man through whom the Son of man is given up; it would have been well for that man if he had never come into the world.