Job 3:1-26 - Dummelow's Commentary on the Bible

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Job Curses his Day

Job curses the day of his birth. He asks why he did not die at birth: why should his wretched life be prolonged?

We are now confronted with a striking change in Job's frame of mind from that presented in Job 2:10. Probably a considerable interval had elapsed before his friends arrived. He complains in the speeches which follow of the emaciated state into which he had fallen, and that from being the honoured of all he had become a byword to his neighbours: cp. Job 1:3; Job 19:8-22; Job 30:1-15. it is evident from this chapter that he has been brooding over the miseries of his condition and the hopelessness of the future, and complaint has taken the place of resignation. The presence of his friends only provokes him to give vent to his anguish. In their silent amazement he sees as in a mirror the extent of his own misery. He casts himself confidently on their sympathetic comprehension, and freely utters the dark thoughts he has hitherto restrained. He knows that if left to himself he may lose the fear of the Almighty, and trusts that they will deliver him from this temptation. But an obsolete theology froze their power to help.

Job 3 - Job 42:6 are poetical in form, not in exact metre as if for song, but rhythmical for reading. The parts of which the couplet or triplet forming the verse are composed show a marked parallelism, the thought in one half corresponding to or completing the thought in the other. Job 3 is a good example.

There is much similarity between this chapter and Jeremiah 20:14-18, but the thoughts are those natural to the Hebrew mind, and we need not necessarily suppose them to be borrowed in either case.

3-10. Job curses the day of his birth.

Related Commentaries of Job 3:1

Job 3:1-26

1 After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day.

2 And Job spake,a 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 stainb 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 dawningc 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 wearyd 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 longe 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,f 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.