3 After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. 2 And Job said:
3 “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 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 Leviathan.
9 Let the stars of its dawn be dark;
let it hope for light, but have none,
nor see 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 did I not die at birth,
come out from the womb and expire?
12 Why did 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 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 stillborn child,
as infants who never see the light?
17 There the wicked cease from troubling,
and there the weary are at rest.
18 There the prisoners are at ease together;
they hear not the voice of 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 the bitter in soul,
21 who long for death, but it comes not,
and dig for it more than for hidden treasures,
22 who rejoice exceedingly
and are glad when they find the grave?
23 Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden,
whom God has hedged in?
24 For my sighing comes instead of1 my bread,
and my groanings are poured out like water.
25 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.”
Section Overview
As we turn to chapter 3, we learn that perhaps Job should keep quiet too. That is not to say that Job sins with his lips in his nine speeches (cf. Job 42:7, 8), the first of which is recorded here. But it is to say that maybe he would be better off remaining silent and waiting for God to speak. What Job says in this soliloquy is both expected and unexpected. Considering Job’s situation, it is expected that Job might curse the day of his birth, wondering why he was born if only to suffer such calamities. What is unexpected, following his two earlier speeches (1:21; 2:9–10), is the depths of his despair. He makes no confession of faith in God. He holds out no hope for the future. However, he will have more to say. The debate is about to begin the moment he says that “trouble comes” (3:26b). Between Job’s short opening lament over life (ch. 3) and his long closing monologue on the mystery of God’s ways and Job’s personal integrity (chs. 26–31), an aggressive interchange of ideas—two full cycles of dialogue—will emerge (chs. 4–25).
Section Outline
Response
Job’s six interrogatives—why, why, why, why, why, why—will be answered promptly by his friends: “Why? Let us tell you why. Because you have sinned!” But his questions will not be answered by God when he finally opens his mouth (chs. 38–41). The “why” question just lingers on throughout the OT until we find it on the lips of our Lord Jesus: “‘Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?’ that is, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” (Matt. 27:46). Our—and Job’s—Redeemer has the question “why” on his lips when he dies. He does not ask God (his Father), as Job does, why, if he was to suffer this much, he was born in the first place. Instead, his “why” question takes us back to the very reason he was born. He was born to die. He was born to suffer and die. He was born to be God-forsaken.
The scene Matthew sets is quite dramatic.51 “Darkness” comes upon the land. For three hours all is dark, and perhaps all is silent. Then, at the about the ninth hour (three o’clock, the time the lamb was brought into the temple to be slaughtered), “Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, . . . ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” (Matt. 27:46). Why did Jesus cry out the first sentence of Psalm 22? Why not cry out its last three victorious verses (“All the prosperous of the earth eat and worship; . . .”), the first verses from Psalm 23 (“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul”), or the start of Psalm 21 (“O Lord, in your strength the king rejoices, and in your salvation how greatly he exults! You have given him his heart’s desire and have not withheld the request of his lips”)? Why Psalm 22:1? Also, why a question and not an affirmation on his lips? Would not something like “God loves all of you” be more soothing, or “Let there be peace on earth” be less cutting? Why a question? And why a question to God about where God is when Jesus needs him most?
The voice fits the setting: a dark cry for a dark hour. Furthermore, and more importantly, the verb of Jesus’ question provides us with Jesus’ theology of the cross: “forsaken.” The world’s greatest religion of the time (Judaism) has forsaken him. The world’s strongest and seemingly most civilized empire (Rome) has forsaken him. His own apostles have forsaken him. (Jesus does not—like Job—have three friends, even one friend, to argue with.) And now (can it be true?), has his Father forsaken him? Is he God-forsaken? Jesus feels that he is.
But it is one thing to feel forsaken; it is another thing to actually be forsaken. Was there somehow a severing of Trinitarian fellowship? How could there be? Did the Father really forsake his Son on the cross? And, if so, what was the nature and purpose of this God-forsakenness? Matthew does not directly tell us. But he does record the darkness and the dark cry of dereliction to move us in a direction, and that direction is to what Paul later summarizes in 2 Corinthians 5:18–21, which can be stated as follows: God made sinless Jesus “to be sin” so that we might be forgiven of our sins. This fits the verses in Matthew that teach that Jesus’ death was the atonement for sins: Jesus saved “his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21) by giving “his life as a ransom” (Matt. 20:28) and by pouring out his blood “for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matt. 26:28).
There are major Christological implications to Job’s soliloquy. Job thought he was forsaken by God. But he was not. God’s silence did not mean his forsakenness. Jesus, however, was forsaken. He was forsaken so that we might not suffer eternal silence and separation from God. “Why” is not the ultimate, or even the foundational, question in the book of Job, but Jesus’ “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani” is the ultimate and most foundational question in the Bible. Without Jesus’ propitiation we are absolutely hopeless. Without Jesus’ atoning sacrifice our hands are stained with blood. We are guilty. Without the Word’s becoming flesh and dying in his flesh as the God-man, we have no hope of eternal life, eternal joy, or eternal fellowship with the wise and just and loving God. So, as we read this depressing poem in Job 3, let us thank God for Job’s honesty. But let us also thank God for the gospel, for our great Redeemer who, in his death, redeemed us, saving us from sin and Satan.