Here the metrical part of this book begins, which in the original Hebrew is broken into short verses, and is very beautiful, thus: שׂאבד יום אולד בו Jobad jom ivaled bo, והלילה אמר הרה גבר Vehalailah amar horah geber.
Let the day perish wherein I was born, And the night which said, A man child is conceived.
Let the day perish, &c. So far from desiring, according to the general and prevailing custom, that my birth-day should be celebrated; that any singular tokens of joy and gratulation should be expressed on it, in remembrance of my coming into the world, my earnest and passionate desire is, that it may not so much as be reckoned one of the days of the year, but that both it and the remembrance of it may be utterly lost. And the night in which it was said With joy and triumph, as happy tidings, There is a man-child conceived Or rather, brought forth, as the word הרה, harah, signifies, (1 Chronicles 4:17,) for the exact time of conception is commonly unknown to women themselves, and certainly is not wont to be reported among men, as this day is supposed to be. Indeed, this latter clause is only a repetition of the former, expressing that, whether it was day or night when he was born, he wished the time to be forgotten. Heath translates the words, And the night which said, See, a man-child is born; and he observes, from Schultens, “that the bearing of a son was considered a matter of great consequence among the Arabians; the form of their appreciation of happiness to a new-married woman being, ‘May you live happy, and bring forth male children.'“