Job 3 · ESV Study Bible

Job’s Three Friends

Job Laments His Birth

JOB 3 [†]After this Job h opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. 2And Job said:

3[^][†] i “Let the day perish on which I was born,

and the night that said,

‘A man is conceived.’

4 Let that day be darkness!

May God above not seek it,

nor light shine upon it.

5 Let gloom and j deep darkness claim it.

Let clouds dwell upon it;

let the blackness of the day terrify it.

6 That night—let thick darkness seize it!

Let it not rejoice among the days of the year;

let it not come into the number of the months.

7 Behold, let that night be barren;

let no joyful cry enter it.

8[†] Let those curse it who curse the day,

who are ready to rouse up k Leviathan.

9 Let the stars of its dawn be dark;

let it hope for light, but have none,

nor see l the eyelids of the morning,

10 because it did not shut the doors of my mother’s womb,

nor hide trouble from my eyes.

11[†] “Why m did I not die at birth,

come out from the womb and expire?

12 Why did n the knees receive me?

Or why the breasts, that I should nurse?

13[†] For then I would have lain down and been quiet;

I would have slept; then I would have been at rest,

14 with kings and counselors of the earth

who o rebuilt ruins for themselves,

15 or with princes who had gold,

who filled their houses with silver.

16 Or why was I not as a hidden p stillborn child,

as infants who never see the light?

17 There the wicked cease from troubling,

and there the weary are at q rest.

18 There the prisoners are at ease together;

they hear not the voice of r the taskmaster.

19 The small and the great are there,

and the slave is free from his master.

20[†] “Why is light given to him who is in misery,

and life to s the bitter in soul,

21 who t long for death, but it comes not,

and dig for it more than for u hidden treasures,

22 who rejoice exceedingly

and are glad when they find the grave?

23[†] Why is light given to a man whose v way is hidden,

whom God has w hedged in?

24 For my sighing comes x instead of [1] my bread,

and my y groanings are poured out like water.

25 z For the thing that I fear comes upon me,

and what I dread befalls me.

26 I am not at ease, nor am I quiet;

I have no rest, but trouble comes.”

JOB—NOTE ON 3:1–2 Introduction. Job cursed the day of his birth because it represented the path of his entire life, which had led to his present distress.

JOB—NOTE ON 3:1–26 Job: Despair for the Day of His Birth. After the prose introduction (vv. 1–2), Job curses the day of his birth (vv. 3–10), expanding on this theme with two sequences of “why?” questions: the first expresses longing for rest (vv. 11–19); the second laments his anxious suffering (vv. 20–26). Job’s opening lament plays off the vocabulary of light and darkness in relation to both questions of the section: “Why did I not die at birth?” (v. 11) and “Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in?” (v. 23). Job is mystified by his current circumstances, and here he wonders whether he would have been better off in the darkness of never being born at all rather than having the light of life result in such suffering and grief. The vocabulary of Job’s lament is the beginning of a theme throughout the dialogue with his friends in which darkness and light will be used to refer to both death and life as well as to what is hidden and what is revealed.

JOB—NOTE ON 3:23 In his accusation, Satan argued that Job was upright only because God had put a “hedge” of blessing around him (1:10). Here in the opening lament of the dialogues, Job refers to his sustained life amid inscrutable circumstances of suffering as rendering him one whom God has hedged in. Satan’s contention is disproved through Job’s continued faithfulness. Job’s overall lament of his situation is something which God both reproves (see chs. 38–41) and commends (42:7).

JOB—NOTE ON 3:13–19 Job describes death as rest from the toil of life by picturing its effect on persons both high and low in society, and wishes he had joined all who were already in this state of rest rather than being born. In vv. 13–15 Job refers to the kings and princes who labored to obtain wealth and build cities but now lay without them in death. In vv. 16–19 Job focuses on the way death removes the constraints of social position, focusing attention particularly on the small and the slave, and those who have been weary or prisoners.

JOB—NOTE ON 3:1–42:6 Dialogue: Job, His Suffering, and His Standing before God. Between the brief narrative sections of the prologue (1:1–2:13) and epilogue (42:7–17), the large central section of the book consists of dialogue in poetic form (except for the narrative introduction of Elihu in 32:1–5) that focuses on the question of what Job’s suffering reveals both about him and about God’s governing of the world. This section progresses in five main parts: Job’s opening lament (3:1–26), a lengthy section of interchanges between the three friends and Job (4:1–25:6), Job’s closing monologue (26:1–31:40), Elihu’s response (32:1–37:24), and the Lord’s appearance to and interaction with Job (38:1–42:6).

JOB—NOTE ON 3:8 Aspects of ancient myth are sometimes referenced metaphorically in Scripture, often in images of God’s power or authority (cf. 26:12). By referring here to those who set a curse upon a day by calling upon Leviathan (see note on Ps. 74:14), Job calls for their incantations as one more piece of his lament against the day of his birth.