Job 3

Job curses the day of his birth

After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth.

3:1 From here to the end of chapter 31 we have the words of Job and his three friends concerning Job’s sufferings. They have spent seven days together, each one trying to think through the problem of why such terrible troubles have come upon him. Job speaks first. For a long time he has been in constant pain, thinking about his sufferings and losses. Why has God treated me like this? What evil have I done? What hope remains for me? Is not death better than such a life? And is not being born at all not the best of all? Questions like these have troubled his mind and pressed like a great weight on his spirit. He understands nothing of what has happened and he has no answers for any of his problems.

He has, of course, no knowledge of the words spoken by Satan and by God in heaven. His friends have brought him no light, no comfort. He has lost the fellowship with God which he had long enjoyed. He prays, he cries out in his anguish of body and heart, but God is silent toward him. He is in a state of deep depression.

And remember that Job had no such promises as John 16:33; Rom 8:17-18, 28; 2 Cor 4:17; 1 Pet 3:12-13; Rev 7:17; 21:3-4. These verses had not yet been written. Job did not know of the wonderful display of God’s love through the cross of Christ. That had not yet taken place. God progressively, here a little, there a little, revealed His truth in human history and Job lived toward the dawn of God’s written revelation. He had no promise of God that gave enlightenment and encouragement in his situation. He could only use his human reason to try to understand what had happened. But his reason failed to bring him any comfort. For what had happened seemed contrary to reason and all he knew about God.

Suddenly like the bursting of a dam his heart and mouth open and all his pent-up emotions, his tortured thoughts pour forth. No one should think to judge harshly what he said. The words he spoke in this chapter are the words of a man who in both body and mind is wounded almost beyond endurance. (See Job’s own comments about this in Job 6:2-4, 11-13; 7:11.) Remember that he was the best man on earth according to God’s own word (Job 2:3). Not one of us in his situation and in his time would have behaved or spoken better than he. Indeed would any of us have spoken as well?

Of course, a believer now with God’s full revelation of truth in the Bible, if he meets suffering and disaster, should never allow himself to use such language as Job here used. But let us keep in mind how little he had of God’s revelation.⚜

2 And Job spoke and said,

3 “May the day I was born perish, and the night in which it was said, ‘A male child is conceived.’

3:3 See Jeremiah’s words (Jer 20:14-18).⚜

4 May that day be darkness. May God not regard it from above, and may the light not shine on it. 5 May darkness and the shadow of death claim it. May a cloud settle on it. May the blackness of the day terrify it. 6 As for that night, may darkness seize it. May it not be joined to the days of the year. May it not come into the number of the months. 7 Oh, may that night be barren. May no joyful voice come into it. 8 May those who curse days curse it, those who are ready to rouse Leviathan.

3:8 Note on Leviathan at Job 41:1.⚜

9 May the stars of its twilight be dark. May it look for light, but have none, and may it not see the dawning of the day,

10 Because it did not shut up the doors of my mother’s womb, or hide sorrow from my eyes.

11 “Why did I not die at birth? Why did I not expire when I came out of the womb?

12 Why did the knees receive me? Or why the breasts that I should suck?

13 For now I would have been lying still and quiet; I would have been sleeping. Then I would have been at rest,

14 With kings and counsellors of the earth, who built up the ruins for themselves,

15 Or with princes who had gold, who filled their houses with silver.

16 Or why was I not hidden like a still-born child, like infants who never saw light?

17 There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary are at rest.

18 There the prisoners rest together. They do not hear the voice of the oppressor.

19 The small and great are there, and the servant is freed from his master.

3:13-19 More than anything else Job longs for rest and quietness for body and mind. So death seemed to him sweeter than life.⚜

20 “Why is light given to him who is in misery, and life to the bitter in soul,

3:20 Job’s question here has troubled men from the beginning of recorded history. The question is, what is the point in living when life is full of suffering and seems without hope and purpose? To Job life had become absurd and practically impossible. It was not given him to see any of the reasons for the sufferings of God’s people, as revealed in other places in the Bible, particularly in the New Testament (Deut 8:2, 16; Ps 66:10-12; Prov 17:3; Rom 5:3-4; 2 Cor 12:7-10; Heb 2:10; 12:5-11; Jam 1:2-4; 1 Pet 1:6-7).

None of us fully understands God’s dealings with men, or the reasons for all the misery and suffering that come on God’s people. In the book of Job itself no reason is given. God at the end merely reveals Himself as the all-wise and all-powerful ruler of the universe. But in the light of the teachings of the Bible as a whole several reasons may be given to the question that arises about the sufferings and trials of the righteous.

These come to prove the reality of a believer’s faith and to strengthen and purify it.

They develop the great virtue of patience.

They awaken believers out of lethargy and ease and stir them up to thought, self examination, and prayer.

They aim a blow at any remaining self-righteousness and boasting or self-indulgence in believers.

They help to break believers away from the bonds of earth and make them seek their all in God.

They help them to appreciate more fully Christ’s sufferings for them.

Patiently endured they shut Satan’s mouth and greatly glorify God.

They help to reveal and perfect the believer’s character and to make it more Christ-like.

And they work for believers an eternal weight of glory (2 Cor 4:17).⚜

21 Who long for death, but it does not come, and dig for it more than for hidden treasures,

22 Who rejoice exceedingly and are glad when they can find the grave?

3:21-22 Job had no fear of what might lay beyond death. His conscience did not accuse him about anything. He was not afraid to stand before God and give an account of his life. Longings for death are not uncommon even among the best of God’s people (see Num 11:15; 1 Kings 19:4; Jer 20:14-18; Jonah 4:8; Phil 1:23). See notes on fear of death at Ps 55:4-5; and 116:15. But suicide was a sin not even to be considered. Suicide is the same as murder.⚜

23 Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden, and whom God has hedged in?

24 For my sighing comes before I eat, and my groans pour out like water.

25 For the thing which I greatly feared has come on me, and what I was afraid of has come to me.

3:25 Job is probably not referring to the sudden loss of children, property, and health – see Job 29:18-20. The fear he had may have come after those calamities, and may have been the fear of completely losing God’s fellowship and the light of God’s countenance. To a man like Job in those circumstances this would have been a great fear indeed, and he thought this fear was being fulfilled.⚜

26 I am not at ease; I have no rest; I am not quiet, for turmoil has come”.