(1) В¶ 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.
It is worthy our closest observation in this account of Job, (and indeed it is one of the most important considerations in his history) that in the example of great and good men, the Holy Ghost hath been pleased to open to the view of the church, their frailties and imperfections also. While we are called upon to behold the patience of Job, James 5:11. we are to be taught, no less, that he was a man of like passions with ourselves. So in the examples of David, Peter, and others. Jeremiah acted as Job did under his affliction: Jeremiah 20:14-18. What Job hath said of the day of a man's birth, indeed, as it concerns our being born in sin, is true enough. And in this spiritual sense, the day of our death, when we die to sin, and are new born unto a life of righteousness in Jesus, by the quickening of the Spirit, is, as the wise man observes, for better. Ecclesiastes 7:1. But, otherwise, a child of God, under the heaviest affliction, hath a consolation in Jesus, to sweeten all. Reader! if the Lord, in infinite mercy, hath given you and me a new life, what blessings may we trace, both in our old creation, and in our new? Many a poor sinner hath been tempted to curse the day of his birth in nature. Oh! how may you and I bless the day of our new birth in grace!