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

¹⁸ For the Lord had kept all the women of the house of Abimelech from having children, because of Sarah, Abraham's wife.

¹⁰ So put away trouble from your heart, and sorrow from your flesh; because the early years and the best years are to no purpose.

³ If a man has a hundred children, and his life is long so that the days of his years are great in number, but his soul takes no pleasure in good, and he is not honoured at his death; I say that a birth before its time is better than he.

⁴ In wind it came and to the dark it will go, and with the dark will its name be covered.

⁵ Yes, it saw not the sun, and it had no knowledge; it is better with this than with the other.

² Even today my outcry is bitter; his hand is hard on my sorrow.

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,

¹⁹ And for me to have been as if I had not been; to have been taken from my mother's body straight to my last resting-place.

¹ My soul is tired of life; I will let my sad thoughts go free in words; my soul will make a bitter outcry.

² If only my passion might be measured, and put into the scales against my trouble!

³ For then its weight would be more than the sand of the seas: because of this my words have been uncontrolled.

⁵ But to Hannah he gave one part, though Hannah was very dear to him, but the Lord had not let her have children.

³¹ Now the Lord, seeing that Leah was not loved, gave her a child; while Rachel had no children.

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.