Text -- Job 3:1-18 (NET)

II. Job’s Dialogue With His Friends
(3:1-27:33)

Job Regrets His Birth

3:1 After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day he was born. 3:2 Job spoke up and said: 3:3 “Let the day on which I was born perish, and the night that said, ‘A man has been conceived!’ 3:4 That day– let it be darkness; let not God on high regard it, nor let light shine on it! 3:5 Let darkness and the deepest shadow claim it; let a cloud settle on it; let whatever blackens the day terrify it! 3:6 That night– let darkness seize it; let it not be included among the days of the year; let it not enter among the number of the months! 3:7 Indeed, let that night be barren; let no shout of joy penetrate it! 3:8 Let those who curse the day curse it– those who are prepared to rouse Leviathan. 3:9 Let its morning stars be darkened; let it wait for daylight but find none, nor let it see the first rays of dawn, 3:10 because it did not shut the doors of my mother’s womb on me, nor did it hide trouble from my eyes!

Job Wishes He Had Died at Birth

3:11 “Why did I not die at birth, and why did I not expire as I came out of the womb? 3:12 Why did the knees welcome me, and why were there two breasts that I might nurse at them? 3:13 For now I would be lying down and would be quiet, I would be asleep and then at peace 3:14 with kings and counselors of the earth who built for themselves places now desolate, 3:15 or with princes who possessed gold, who filled their palaces with silver. 3:16 Or why was I not buried like a stillborn infant, like infants who have never seen the light? 3:17 There the wicked cease from turmoil, and there the weary are at rest. 3:18 There the prisoners relax together; they do not hear the voice of the oppressor.

Commentary -- Word/Phrase Notes (per phrase)

Wesley: Job 3:1

His birth - day, in vain do some endeavour to excuse this and the following speeches of Job, who afterwards is reproved by God, and severely accuseth himself for them, Job 38:2, Job 40:4, Job 13:3, Job 13:6. And yet he does not proceed so far as to curse God, but makes the devil a liar: but although he does not break forth into direct reproaches of God, yet he makes indirect reflections upon his providence. His curse was sinful, both because it was vain, being applied to a thing, which was not capable of blessing and cursing, and because it cast a blame upon God for bringing that day, and for giving him life on that day.

Wesley: Job 3:3

Let the remembrance of that day be utterly lost.

Wesley: Job 3:4

I wish the sun had never risen upon that day, or, which is all one, that it had never been; and whensoever that day returns, I wish it may be black, and gloomy, and uncomfortable.

Wesley: Job 3:4

From heaven, by causing the light of the sun which is in heaven to shine upon it.

Wesley: Job 3:5

A black and dark shadow like that of the place of the dead, which is a land of darkness.

Wesley: Job 3:5

Take away its beauty and glory.

Wesley: Job 3:5

That is, men in it. Let it be always observed as a frightful and dismal day.

Wesley: Job 3:6

Constant and extraordinary darkness, without the least glimmering of light from the moon or stars.

Wesley: Job 3:6

Reckoned as one, or a part of one of them.

Wesley: Job 3:8

Their birth - day: when their afflictions move them to curse their own birth - day, let them remember mine also, and bestow some curses upon it.

Wesley: Job 3:8

Who are full of sorrow, and always ready to pour out their cries, and tears, and complaints.

Wesley: Job 3:9

Let the stars, which are the glory and beauty of the night, be covered with thick darkness, and that both in the evening twilight, when the stars begin to shine; and also in the farther progress of the night, even 'till the morning dawns.

Wesley: Job 3:9

Let its darkness be aggravated with the disappointment of its expectations of light. He ascribes sense or reasoning to the night, by a poetical fiction, usual in all writers.

Wesley: Job 3:9

Heb.

Wesley: Job 3:9

lids of the day, the morning - star which ushers in the day, and the beginning, and progress of the morning light, let this whole natural day, consisting of night and day, be blotted out of the catalogue of days.

Wesley: Job 3:10

The night or the day: to which those things are ascribed which were done by others in them, as is frequent in poetical writings.

Wesley: Job 3:10

That it might never have brought me forth.

Wesley: Job 3:10

Because it did not keep me from entering into this miserable life, and seeing, or experiencing, these bitter sorrows.

Wesley: Job 3:12

Why did the midwife or nurse receive and lay me upon her knees, and not suffer me to fall upon the bare ground, 'till death had taken me out of this miserable world, into which their cruel kindness hath betrayed me? Why did the breasts prevent me from perishing through hunger, or supply me that should have what to suck? Thus Job unthankfully despises these wonderful mercies of God towards poor helpless infants.

Wesley: Job 3:14

I had then been as happy as the proudest monarchs, who after all their great achievements and enjoyments, go down into their graves.

Wesley: Job 3:14

Who to shew their wealth and power, or to leave behind them a glorious name, rebuilt ruined cities, or built new cities and palaces, in places where before there was mere solitude and wasteness.

Wesley: Job 3:16

Undiscerned and unregarded. Born before the due time.

Wesley: Job 3:16

In the land of the living.

Wesley: Job 3:17

In the grave.

Wesley: Job 3:17

The great oppressors and troublers of the world cease from their vexations, rapins and murders.

Wesley: Job 3:17

Those who were here molested and tired out with their tyrannies, now quietly sleep with them.

Wesley: Job 3:18

Or, taskmaster, who urges and forces them to work by cruel threatenings and stripes. Job meddles not here with their eternal state after death, of which he speaks hereafter, but only their freedom from worldly troubles, which is the sole matter of his present discourse.

JFB: Job 3:1

The Orientals speak seldom, and then sententiously; hence this formula expressing deliberation and gravity (Psa 78:2). He formally began.

JFB: Job 3:1

The strict Hebrew word for "cursing:" not the same as in Job 1:5. Job cursed his birthday, but not his God.

JFB: Job 3:2

Hebrew, "answered," that is, not to any actual question that preceded, but to the question virtually involved in the case. His outburst is singularly wild and bold (Jer 20:14). To desire to die so as to be free from sin is a mark of grace; to desire to die so as to escape troubles is a mark of corruption. He was ill-fitted to die who was so unwilling to live. But his trials were greater, and his light less, than ours.

JFB: Job 3:3

Rather "the night which said." The words in italics are not in the Hebrew. Night is personified and poetically made to speak. So in Job 3:7, and in Psa 19:2. The birth of a male in the East is a matter of joy; often not so of a female.

JFB: Job 3:4

Rather, more poetically, "seek it out." "Let not God stoop from His bright throne to raise it up from its dark hiding-place." The curse on the day in Job 3:3, is amplified in Job 3:4-5; that on the night, in Job 3:6-10.

JFB: Job 3:5

("deepest darkness," Isa 9:2).

JFB: Job 3:5

This is a later sense of the verb [GESENIUS]; better the old and more poetic idea, "Let darkness (the ancient night of chaotic gloom) resume its rights over light (Gen 1:2), and claim that day as its own."

JFB: Job 3:5

Collectively, a gathered mass of dark clouds.

JFB: Job 3:5

Literally, "the obscurations"; whatever darkens the day [GESENIUS]. The verb in Hebrew expresses sudden terrifying. May it be suddenly affrighted at its own darkness. UMBREIT explains it as "magical incantations that darken the day," forming the climax to the previous clauses; Job 3:8 speaks of "cursers of the day" similarly. But the former view is simpler. Others refer it to the poisonous simoom wind.

JFB: Job 3:6

As its prey, that is, utterly dissolve it.

JFB: Job 3:6

Rather, by poetic personification, "Let it not rejoice in the circle of days and nights and months, which form the circle of years."

JFB: Job 3:7

Rather, "unfruitful." "Would that it had not given birth to me."

JFB: Job 3:8

If "mourning" be the right rendering in the latter clause of this verse, these words refer to the hired mourners of the dead (Jer 9:17). But the Hebrew for "mourning" elsewhere always denotes an animal, whether it be the crocodile or some huge serpent (Isa 27:1), such as is meant by "leviathan." Therefore, the expression, "cursers of day," refers to magicians, who were believed to be able by charms to make a day one of evil omen. (So Balaam, Num 22:5). This accords with UMBREIT'S view (Job 3:7); or to the Ethiopians and Atlantes, who "used to curse the sun at his rising for burning up them and their country" [HERODOTUS]. Necromancers claimed power to control or rouse wild beasts at will, as do the Indian serpent-charmers of our day (Psa 58:5). Job does not say they had the power they claimed; but, supposing they had, may they curse the day. SCHUTTENS renders it by supplying words as follows:--Let those that are ready for anything, call it (the day) the raiser up of leviathan, that is, of a host of evils.

JFB: Job 3:9

Literally, "eyelashes of morning." The Arab poets call the sun the eye of day. His early rays, therefore, breaking forth before sunrise, are the opening eyelids or eyelashes of morning.

JFB: Job 3:12

Old English for "anticipate my wants." The reference is to the solemn recognition of a new-born child by the father, who used to place it on his knees as his own, whom he was bound to rear (Gen 30:3; Gen 50:23; Isa 66:12).

JFB: Job 3:13

A gradation. I should not only have lain, but been quiet, and not only been quiet, but slept. Death in Scripture is called "sleep" (Psa 13:3); especially in the New Testament, where the resurrection-awakening is more clearly set forth (1Co 15:51; 1Th 4:14; 1Th 5:10).

JFB: Job 3:14

Who built up for themselves what proved to be (not palaces, but) ruins! The wounded spirit of Job, once a great emir himself, sick of the vain struggles of mortal great men, after grandeur, contemplates the palaces of kings, now desolate heaps of ruins. His regarding the repose of death the most desirable end of the great ones of earth, wearied with heaping up perishable treasures, marks the irony that breaks out from the black clouds of melancholy [UMBREIT]. The "for themselves" marks their selfishness. MICHAELIS explains it weakly of mausoleums, such as are found still, of stupendous proportions, in the ruins of Petra of Idumea.

JFB: Job 3:15

Some take this to refer to the treasures which the ancients used to bury with their dead. But see Job 3:26.

JFB: Job 3:16

(Psa 58:8); preferable to the life of the restless miser (Ecc 6:3-5).

JFB: Job 3:17

The original meaning, "those ever restless," "full of desires" (Isa 57:20-21).

JFB: Job 3:17

Literally, "those whose strength is wearied out" (Rev 14:13).

JFB: Job 3:18

From their chains.

Clarke: Job 3:1

After this opened Job his mouth - After the seven days’ mourning was over, there being no prospect of relief, Job is represented as thus cursing the day of his birth. Here the poetic part of the book begins; for most certainly there is nothing in the preceding chapters either in the form or spirit of Hebrew poetry. It is easy indeed to break the sentences into hemistichs; but this does not constitute them poetry: for, although Hebrew poetry is in general in hemistichs, yet it does not follow that the division of narrative into hemistichs must necessarily constitute it poetry

In many cases the Asiatic poets introduce their compositions with prose narrative; and having in this way prepared the reader for what he is to expect, begin their deevans, cassidehs, gazels, etc. This appears to be the plan followed by the author of this book. Those who still think, after examining the structure of those chapters, and comparing them with the undoubted poetic parts of the book, that they also, and the ten concluding verses, are poetry, have my consent, while I take the liberty to believe most decidedly the opposite

Clarke: Job 3:1

Cursed his day - That is, the day of his birth; and thus he gave vent to the agonies of his soul, and the distractions of his mind. His execrations have something in them awfully solemn, tremendously deep, and strikingly sublime. But let us not excuse all the things which he said in his haste, and in the bitterness of his soul, because of his former well established character of patience. He bore all his privations with becoming resignation to the Divine will and providence: but now, feeling himself the subject of continual sufferings, being in heaviness through manifold temptation, and probably having the light of God withdrawn from his mind, as his consolations most undoubtedly were, he regrets that ever he was born; and in a very high strain of impassioned poetry curses his day. We find a similar execration to this in Jeremiah, Jer 20:14-18, and in other places; which, by the way, are no proofs that the one borrowed from the other; but that this was the common mode of Asiatic thinking, speaking, and feeling, on such occasions.

Clarke: Job 3:3

There is a man-child conceived - The word הרה harah signifies to conceive; yet here, it seems, it should be taken in the sense of being born, as it is perfectly unlikely that the night of conception should be either distinctly known or published.

Clarke: Job 3:4

Let that day be darkness - The meaning is exactly the same with our expression, "Let it be blotted out of the calendar."However distinguished it may have been, as the birthday of a man once celebrated for his possessions, liberality, and piety, let it no longer be thus noted; as he who was thus celebrated is now the sport of adversity, the most impoverished, most afflicted, and most wretched of human beings

Clarke: Job 3:4

Let not God regard it from above - אל ידרשהו al yidreshehu , "Let Him not require it"- let Him not consider it essential to the completion of the days of the year; and therefore he adds, neither let the light shine upon it. If it must be a part of duration, let it not be distinguished by the light of the sun.

Clarke: Job 3:5

Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it - יגאלהו yigaluhu , "pollute or avenge it,"from גאל gaal , to vindicate, avenge, etc.; hence גאל goel , the nearest of kin, whose right it was to redeem an inheritance, and avenge the death of his relative by slaying the murderer. Let this day be pursued, overtaken, and destroyed. Let natural darkness, the total privation of the solar light, rendered still more intense by death’ s shadow projected over it, seize on and destroy this day, εκλαβοι αυτην, Septuagint; alluding, perhaps, says Mr. Parkhurst, to the avenger of blood seizing the offender

Clarke: Job 3:5

Let a cloud dwell upon it - Let the dymme cloude fall upon it - Coverdale. Let the thickest clouds have there their dwelling-place - let that be the period of time on which they shall constantly rest, and never be dispersed. This seems to be the import of the original, תשכן עליו אננה tishcan alaiv ananah . Let it be the place in which clouds shall be continually gathered together, so as to be the storehouse of the densest vapors, still in the act of being increasingly condensed

Clarke: Job 3:5

Let the blackness of the day terrify it - And let it be lapped in with sorrowe. - Coverdale. This is very expressive: lap signifies to fold up, or envelope any particular thing with fold upon fold, so as to cover it everywhere and secure it in all points. Leaving out the semicolon, we had better translate the whole clause thus: "Let the thickest cloud have its dwelling-place upon it, and let the bitterness of a day fill it with terror."A day similar to that, says the Targum, in which Jeremiah was distressed for the destruction of the house of the sanctuary; or like that in which Jonah was cast into the sea of Tarsis; such a day as that on which some great or national misfortune has happened: probably in allusion to that in which the darkness that might be felt enveloped the whole land of Egypt, and the night in which the destroying angel slew all the first-born in the land.

Clarke: Job 3:6

As for that night, let darkness seize upon it - I think the Targum has hit the sense of this whole verse: "Let darkness seize upon that night; let it not be reckoned among the annual festivals; in the number of the months of the calendar let it not be computed."Some understand the word אפל ophel as signifying a dark storm; hence the Vulgate, tenebrosus turbo , "a dark whirlwind."And hence Coverdale, Let the darck storme overcome that night, let it not be reckoned amonge the dayes off the yeare, nor counted in the monethes. Every thing is here personified; day, night, darkness, shadow of death, cloud, etc.; and the same idea of the total extinction of that portion of time, or its being rendered ominous and portentous, is pursued through all these verses, from the third to the ninth, inclusive. The imagery is diversified, the expressions varied, but the idea is the same.

Clarke: Job 3:7

Lo, let that night be solitary - The word הנה hinneh , behold, or lo, is wanting in one of De Rossi’ s MSS., nor is it expressed in the Septuagint, Vulgate, Syriac, or Arabic. The word גלמוד galmud , which we translate solitary, is properly Arabic. From ghalama or jalama , signifying to cut off, make bare, amputate, comes jalmud , a rock, a great stone; and jalameedet , weight, a burden, trouble, from which we may gather Job’ s meaning: "Let that night be grievous, oppressive, as destitute of good as a bare rock is of verdure."The Targum gives the sense, In that night let there be tribulation

Clarke: Job 3:7

Let no joyful voice come therein - Let there be no choirs of singers; no pleasant music heard; no dancing or merriment. The word רננה renanah signifies any brisk movement, such as the vibration of the rays of light, or the brisk modulation of the voice in a cheerful ditty. The Targum has, Let not the crowing of the rural or wild cock resound in it. Let all work be intermitted; let there be no sportive exercises, and let all animals be totally silent.

Clarke: Job 3:8

Let them curse it that curse the day - This translation is scarcely intelligible. I have waded through a multitude of interpretations, without being able to collect from them such a notion of the verse as could appear to me probable. Schultens, Rosenmüller, and after them Mr. Good, have labored much to make it plain. They think the custom of sorcerers who had execrations for peoples, places, things, days, etc., is here referred to; such as Balaam, Elymas, and many others were: but I cannot think that a man who knew the Divine Being and his sole government of the world so well as Job did, would make such an allusion, who must have known that such persons and their pretensions were impostors and execrable vanities. I shall give as near a translation as I can of the words, and subjoin a short paraphrase: יקבהו אררי יום העתידימערר לויתן yikkebuhu orerey yom haathidim orer livyathan ; "Let them curse it who detest the day; them who are ready to raise up the leviathan."That is, Let them curse my birthday who hate daylight, such as adulterers, murderers, thieves, and banditti, for whose practices the night is more convenient; and let them curse it who, being like me weary of life, are desperate enough to provoke the leviathan, the crocodile, to tear them to pieces. This version is nearly the same as that given by Coverdale. Let them that curse the daye give it their curse also, then those that be ready to rayse up leviathan. By leviathan some understand the greatest and most imminent dangers; and others, the devil, whom the enchanters are desperate enough to attempt to raise by their incantations. Calmet understands the whole to be spoken of the Atlantes, a people of Ethiopia, who curse the sun because it parches their fields and their bodies; and who fearlessly attack, kill, and eat the crocodile. This seems a good sense.

Clarke: Job 3:9

Let the stars of the twilight thereof - The stars of the twilight may here refer to the planets Venus, Jupiter, Mars, and Mercury, as well as to the brighter fixed stars

Clarke: Job 3:9

Let it look for light - Here the prosopopoeia or personification is still carried on. The darkness is represented as waiting for the lustre of the evening star, but is disappointed; and these for the aurora or dawn, but equally in vain. He had prayed that its light, the sun, should not shine upon it, Job 3:4; and here he prays that its evening star may be totally obscured, and that it might never see the dawning of the day. Thus his execration comprehends every thing that might irradiate or enliven it.

Clarke: Job 3:10

Because it shut not up the doors - Here is the reason why he curses the day and the night in which he was conceived and born; because, had he never been brought into existence, he would never have seen trouble. It seems, however, very harsh that he should have wished the destruction of his mother, in order that his birth might have been prevented; and I rather think Job’ s execration did not extend thus far. The Targum understands the passage as speaking of the umbilical cord, by which the fetus is nourished in its mother’ s womb: had this been shut up, there must have been a miscarriage, or he must have been dead born; and thus sorrow would have been hidden from his eyes. This seeming gloss is much nearer the letter and spirit of the Hebrew than is generally imagined. I shall quote the words: כי לא סגר דלתי בטני ki lo sagar dalthey bitni , because it did not shut up the doors of my belly. This is much more consistent with the feelings of humanity, than to wish his mother’ s womb to have been his grave.

Clarke: Job 3:11

Why died I not from the womb - As the other circumstance did not take place, why was I not still-born, without the possibility of reviviscence? or, as this did not occur, why did I not die as soon as born? These three things appear to me to be clearly intended here: -

1.    Dying in the womb, or never coming to maturity, as in the case of an abortion

2.    Being still-born, without ever being able to breathe

3.    Or, if born alive, dying within a short time after. And to these states he seems to refer in the following verses.

Clarke: Job 3:12

Why did the knees prevent me? - Why was I dandled on the knees? Why was I nourished by the breasts? In either of the above cases I had neither been received into a mother’ s lap, nor hung upon a mother’ s breasts.

Clarke: Job 3:13

For now should I have lain still - In that case I had been insensible; quiet - without these overwhelming agitations; slept - unconscious of evil; been at rest - been out of the reach of calamity and sorrow.

Clarke: Job 3:14

With kings and counsellors of the earth - I believe this translation to be perfectly correct. The counsellors, יעצי yoatsey , I suppose to mean the privy council, or advisers of kings; those without whose advice kings seldom undertake wars, expeditions, etc. These mighty agitators of the world are at rest in their graves, after the lives of commotion which they have led among men: most of whom indeed have been the troublers of the peace of the globe

Clarke: Job 3:14

Which built desolate places - Who erect mausoleums, funeral monuments, sepulchral pyramids, etc., to keep their names from perishing, while their bodies are turned to corruption. I cannot think, with some learned men, that Job is here referring to those patriotic princes who employed themselves in repairing the ruins and desolations which others had occasioned. His simple idea is, that, had he died from the womb, he would have been equally at rest, neither troubling nor troubled, as those defunct kings and planners of wars and great designs are, who have nothing to keep even their names from perishing, but the monuments which they have raised to contain their corrupting flesh, moldering bones, and dust.

Clarke: Job 3:15

Or with princes that had gold - Chief or mighty men, lords of the soil, or fortunate adventurers in merchandise, who got gold in abundance, filled their houses with silver, left all behind, and had nothing reserved for themselves but the empty places which they had made for their last dwelling, and where their dust now sleeps, devoid of care, painful journeys, and anxious expectations. He alludes here to the case of the covetous, whom nothing can satisfy, as an Asiatic writer has observed, but the dust that fills his mouth when laid in the grave - Saady.

Clarke: Job 3:16

Or as a hidden untimely birth - An early miscarriage, which was scarcely perceptible by the parent herself; and in this case he had not been - he had never had the distinguishable form of a human being, whether male or female

Clarke: Job 3:16

As infants - Little ones; those farther advanced in maturity, but miscarried long before the time of birth.

Clarke: Job 3:17

There the wicked cease - In the grave the oppressors of men cease from irritating, harassing, and distressing their fellow creatures and dependents

Clarke: Job 3:17

And there the weary be at rest - Those who were worn out with the cruelties and tyrannies of the above. The troubles and the troubled, the restless and the submissive, the toils of the great and the labors of the slave, are here put in opposition.

Clarke: Job 3:18

The prisoners rest together - Those who were slaves, feeling all the troubles, and scarcely tasting any of the pleasures of life, are quiet in the grave together; and the voice of the oppressor, the hard, unrelenting task-master, which was more terrible than death, is heard no more. They are free from his exactions, and his mouth is silent in the dust. This may be a reference to the Egyptian bondage. The children of Israel cried by reason of their oppressors or task-masters.

Defender: Job 3:1

Job would not curse God, but he did give way and curse the day of his birth, as well as the night of his conception."

TSK: Job 3:1

After : Job 1:22, Job 2:10

opened : Job 35:16; Psa 39:2, Psa 39:3, Psa 106:33

cursed : Job 3:3, Job 1:11, Job 2:5, Job 2:9; Jer 20:14, Jer 20:15

his day : That is, the day of his birth.

TSK: Job 3:2

spake : Heb. answered, Jdg 18:14

TSK: Job 3:3

Let the day : That is, as we say, ""Let it be blotted out of the calendar.""Job 10:18, Job 10:19; Jer 15:10, Jer 20:14, Jer 20:15

TSK: Job 3:4

darkness : Exo 10:22, Exo 10:23; Joe 2:2; Amo 5:18; Mat 27:45; Act 27:20; Rev 16:10

God regard : Deu 11:12

TSK: Job 3:5

the shadow : Job 10:21, Job 10:22, Job 16:16, Job 24:17, Job 28:3, Job 38:17; Psa 23:4, Psa 44:19, Psa 107:10, Psa 107:14; Isa 9:2; Jer 2:6, Jer 13:16; Amo 5:8; Mat 4:16; Luk 1:79

stain it : or, challenge it

let a cloud : Deu 4:11; Eze 30:3, Eze 34:12; Joe 2:2; Heb 12:18

let the blackness : or, let them terrify it, as those who have a bitter day, Jer 4:28; Amo 8:10

TSK: Job 3:6

let it not be joined unto the days : or, let it not rejoice among the days

TSK: Job 3:7

solitary : Isa 13:20-22, Isa 24:8; Jer 7:34; Rev 18:22, Rev 18:23

TSK: Job 3:8

who are ready : 2Ch 35:25; Jer 9:17, Jer 9:18; Amo 5:16; Mat 11:17; Mar 5:38

their mourning : or, a leviathan, Job 41:1, Job 41:10

TSK: Job 3:9

look for light : Job 30:26; Jer 8:15, Jer 13:16

the dawning of the day : Heb. the eye-lids of the morning, Job 41:18

TSK: Job 3:10

it shut not : Job 10:18, Job 10:19; Gen 20:18, Gen 29:31; 1Sa 1:5; Ecc 6:3-5; Jer 20:17

hid : Job 6:2, Job 6:3, Job 10:1, Job 23:2; Ecc 11:10

TSK: Job 3:11

died I : Psa 58:8; Jer 15:10; Hos 9:14

when I came : Psa 22:9, Psa 22:10, Psa 71:6, Psa 139:13-16; Isa 46:3

TSK: Job 3:12

the knees : Gen 30:3, Gen 50:23; Isa 66:12; Eze 16:4, Eze 16:5

TSK: Job 3:13

then had I been at rest : Ecc 6:3-5, Ecc 9:10

TSK: Job 3:14

kings : Job 30:23; 1Ki 2:10, 1Ki 11:43; Psa 49:6-10, Psa 49:14, Psa 89:48; Ecc 8:8; Isa 14:10-16; Eze 27:18-32

which built : Who erect splendid mausoleums, funeral monuments, etc. to keep their names from perishing, while their bodies are turned to corruption. Job 15:28; Isa 5:8; Eze 26:20

TSK: Job 3:15

who filled their houses : That is, ""the covetous, whom nothing can satisfy,""as the poet Saady has observed, ""but the dust that fills his mouth, when laid in the grave.""Job 22:25, Job 27:16; Num 22:18; 1Ki 10:27; Isa 2:7; Zep 1:18; Zec 9:3

TSK: Job 3:16

an hidden : Psa 58:8; 1Co 15:8

TSK: Job 3:17

the wicked : Job 14:13; Psa 55:5-8; Mat 10:28; Luk 12:4; 2Th 1:6, 2Th 1:7; 2Pe 2:8

the weary : Heb. the wearied in strength

at rest : Isa 57:1, Isa 57:2; Heb 4:9, Heb 4:11; Rev 14:13

TSK: Job 3:18

they : Job 39:7; Exo 5:6-8, Exo 5:15-19; Jdg 4:3; Isa 14:3, Isa 14:4

Commentary -- Word/Phrase Notes (per Verse)

Barnes: Job 3:1

After this - Dr. Good renders this, "at length."It means after the long silence of his friends, and after he saw that there was no prospect of relief or of consolation.

Opened Job his mouth - The usual formula in Hebrew to denote thc commencement of a speech; see Mat 5:2. Schultens contends that it means boldness and vehemency of speech, παῤῥησία parrēsia , or an opening of the mouth for the purpose of accusing, expostulating, or complaining; or to begin to utter some sententious, profound, or sublime maxim; and in support of this he appeals to Psa 78:2, ard Pro 8:6. There is probably, however nothing more intended than to begin to speak. It is in accordance with Oriental views, where an act of speaking is regarded as a grave and important matter, and is entered on with much deliberation. Blackwell (Life of Homer, p. 43) remarks that the Turks, Arabs, Hindoos, and the Orientals in general, have little inclination to society and to general conversation, that they seldom speak, and that their speeches are sententious and brief, unless they are much excited. With such men, to make a speech is a serious matter, as is indicated by the manner in which their discourses are commonly introduced: "I will open my mouth,"or they "opened the mouth,"implying great deliberation and gravity. This phrase occurs often in Homer, Hesiod, Orpheus, and in Virgil (compare Aeneid vi. 75), as well as in the Bible. See Burder, in Rosenmuller’ s Morgenland, "in loc."

And cursed his day - The word rendered "curse"here, קלל qâlal is different from that used in Job 1:11; Job 2:9. It is the proper word to denote "to curse."The Syriac adds, "the day in which he was born."A similar expression occurs in Klopstock’ s Messias, Ges. iii.

Wenn nun, aller Kinder beraubt, die verzweifelude Mutter,

Wuthend dem Tag. an dem sie gebahr, und gebohren ward, fluchet .

"When now of all her children robbed, the desperate mother enraged

Curses the day in which she bare, and was borne."

Barnes: Job 3:2

And Job spake - Margin, as in Hebrew, "answered."The Hebrew word used here ענה ‛ânâh "to answer,"is often employed when one commences a discourse, even though no question had preceded. It is somewhat in the sense of replying to a subject, or of speaking in a case where a question might appropriately be asked; Isa. 14:l0 (Hebrew), Zec 3:4; Deu 26:5 (Hebrew), Deu 27:14 (Hebrew). The word "to answer" ἀποκρίνομαι apokrinomai is frequently used in this way in the New Testament; Mat 17:4, Mat 17:17; Mat 28:5; Mar 9:5; Mar 10:51, et al.

Barnes: Job 3:3

Let the day perish - " Perish the day! O that there had never been such a day! Let it be blotted from the memory of man! There is something singularly bold, sublime, and "wild"in this exclamation. It is a burst of feeling where there had been long restraint, and where now it breaks forth in the most vehement and impassioned manner. The word "perish"here יאבד yo'bad expresses the "optative,"and indicates strong desire. So the Septuagint, Ἀπόλοιτο Apoloito , "may it perish,"or be destroyed; compare Job 10:18. "O that I had given up the ghost."Dr. Good says of this exclamation, "There is nothing that I know of, ia ancient or modern poetry, equal to the entire burst, whether in the wildness and horror of the imprecations. or the terrible sublimity of its imagery."The boldest and most animated of the Hebrew poets have imitated it, and have expressed themselves in almost the same language, in scenes of distress. A remarkably similar expression of feeling is made by Jeremiah.

Cursed be the day wherein I was born:

Let not the day wherein my mother bare me be blessed!

Cursed be the man who brought tidings to my father, saying,

"A man child is born unto thee,"

Making him very glad.

Be that man as the cities which yahweh overthrew and repented not!

Yea, let him hear the outcry in the morning,

And the lamentation at noon day!

Jer 20:14-16.

The sense of this expression in Job is plain. He wished there never had been such a day, and then he would not have been born. It is impossible to vindicate these expressions in Job and Jeremiah, unless it be on the supposition that it is highly worked poetic language, caused by sorrow so acute that it could not be expressed in prose. We are to remember, however, if this seems to us inconsistent with the existence of true piety, that Job had far less light than we have; that he lived at an early period of the world, when the views of the divine government were obscure, and that he was not sustained by the hopes and promises which the Christian possesses now. What light he had was probably that of tradition, and of the result of careful observation on the course of events. His topics of consolation must have been comparatively few. He had few or no promises to sustain him. He had not had before him, as we have, the example of the patient Redeemer. His faith was not sustained by those strong assurances which we have of the perfect rectitude of the divine government. Before we blame him too severely, we must place ourselves in imagination in his circumstances, and ask what our piety would have done under the trials which afflicted "him."Yet with all allowances, it is not possible to vindicate this language; and while we cannot but admire its force and sublimity, and its unequalled power and boldness in expressing strong passion, we at the same time feel that there was a lack of proper submission and patience. - It is the impassioned language of a man who felt that he could bear no more; and there can be no doubt that it gave to Satan the hope of his anticipated triumph.

And the night in which it was said - Dr. Good renders this, "And the night which shouted."Noyes, "And the night which said."So Gesenius and Rosenmuller, "Perish the night which said, a man child is conceived."The Vulgate renders it, "The night in which it was said;"the Septuagint, "That night in which they said."The Chaldee paraphrases the verse, "Perish the day in which I was born, and the angel who presided ever my conception."Scott, quoted by Good, translates it, "The night which hailed the new-born man."The language throughout this imprecation is that in which the night is "personified,"and addressed as if it were made glad by the birth of a son. So Schultens says, " Inducitur enim "Nox illa quasi conscia mysterii, et exultans ob spem prolis virilis." Such personifications of day and night are common among the Arabs; see Schultens. It is a representation of day and night as "sympathizing with the joys and sorrows of mankind, and is in the truest vein of Oriental poetry."

There is a man child conceived - Hebrew גבר geber - "a man;"compare Joh 16:21. The word "conceived"Dr. Good renders "brought forth"So Herder translates it. The Septuagint, Ἰδοὺ ἄρσεν Idou arsen - "lo, a male"The common translation expresses the true sense of the original. The joy at the birth of a male in Oriental countries is much greater than that at the birth of a female. A remarkable instance of an imprecation on the day of one’ s birth is found in a Muslim book of modern times, in which the expressions are almost precisely the same as in Job. "Malek er Nasser Daub, prince of some tribes in Palestine, from which however he had been driven, after many adverse fortunes, died in a village near Damascus in the year 1258. When the crusaders had desolated his country, he deplored its misfortunes and his own in a poem, from which Abulfeda (Annals, p. 560) has quoted the following passage: ‘ O that my mother had remained unmarried all the days of her life! That God had determined no lord or consort for her! O that when he had destined her to an excellent, mild, and wise prince, she had been one of those whom he had created barren; that she might never have known the happy intelligence that she had born a man or woman! Or that when she had carried me under her heart, I had lost my life at my birth; and if I had been born, and had seen the light, that, when the congratulating people hastened on their camels, I had been gathered to my fathers.’ "The Greeks and the Romans had their unlucky days ( ἡμέραι ἀποφρύδες hēmerai apofrudes "dies infausti"); that is, days which were unpropitious, or in which they expected no success in any enterprise or any enjoyment. Tacitus (Annals, xiv. 12) mentions that the Roman Senate, for the purpose of flattering Nero, decreed that the birthday of Agrippina should be regarded as an accursed day; ut dies natalis Agrippinae inter nefastos esset. See Rosenmuller, All. u. neue Morgenland, "in loc"Expressions also similar to those before us, occur in Ovid, particularly in the following passage, "Epist. ad Ibin:"

Natus es infelix (ita Dii voluere), nec ulla

Commoda nascenti stella, levisve fuit.

Lux quoque natalis, ne quid nisi tristo videres,

Turpis, et inductis nubibus atra fuit.

Sedit in adverso nocturnas culmine bubo,

Funereoque graves edidit ore sonos.

We have now similar days, which by common superstition are regarded as unlucky or inauspicious. The wish of Job seems to be, that the day of his birth might be regarded as one of those days.

Barnes: Job 3:4

Let that day be darkness - Let it not be day; or, O, that it had not been day, that the sun had not risen, and that it had been night.

Let not God regard it from above - The word rendered here "regard" דרשׁ dârash means properly to seek or inquire after, to ask for or demand. Dr. Good renders it here, "Let not God inclose it,"but this meaning is not found in the Hebrew. Noyes renders it literally, "Let not God seek it."Herder, "Let not God inquire after it."The sense may be, either that Job wished the day sunk beneath the horizon, or in the deep waters by which he conceived the earth to be surrounded, and prays that God would not seek it and bring it from its dark abode; or he desired that God would never inquire after it, that it might pass from his remembrance and be forgotten. What we value, we would wish God to remember and bless; what we dislike, we would wish him to forget. This seems to be the idea here. Job hated that day, and he wished all other beings to forget it. He wished it blotted out, so that even God would never inquire after it, but regard it as if it had never been.

Neither let the light shine upon it - Let it be utter darkness; let not a ray ever reveal it. It will be seen here that Job first curses "the day."The amplification of the curse with which he commenced in the first part of Job 3:3, continues through Job 3:4-5; and then he returns to the "night,"which also (in the latter part of Job 3:3) he wished to be cursed. His desires in regard to that unhappy night, he expresses in Job 3:6-10.

Barnes: Job 3:5

Let darkness and the shadow of death - The Hebrew word צלמות tsalmâveth is exceedingly musical and poetical. It is derived from צל tsêl , "a shadow,"and מות mâveth , "death;"and is used to denote the deepest darkness; see the notes at Isa 9:2. It occurs frequently in the sacred Scriptures; compare Job 10:21-22; Psa 23:4; Job 12:22; Job 16:16; Job 24:17; Job 34:22; Job 38:17; Amo 5:8; Jer 2:6. It is used to denote the abode of departed spirits, described by Job as "a land of darkness, as darkness itself; of the shadow of death without any order, and where the light is as darkness;"Job 10:21-22. The idea seems to have been, that "death"was a dark and gloomy object that obstructed all light, and threw a baleful shade afar, and that that melancholy shade was thrown afar over the regions of the dead. The sense here is, that Job wished the deepest conceivable darkness to rest upon it.

Stain it - Margin, or "challenge."Vulgate, "obscure it."Septuagint, "take or occupy it," Ἐκλάβοι Eklaboi , Dr. Good, "crush it."Noyes, "redeem it."Herder, "seize it."This variety of interpretation has arisen in part from the twofold signification of the word used here, גאל gā'al . The word means either to "redeem,"or to "defile,""pollute,""stain."These senses are not very closely connected, and I know not how the one has grown out of the other, unless it be that redemption was accomplishcd with blood, and that the frequent sprinkling of blood on an altar rendered it defiled, or unclean. In one sense, blood thus sprinkled would purify, when it took away sin; in another, it would render an object unclean or polluted. Gesenius says, that the latter signification occurs only in the later Hebrew. If the word here means to "redeem,"the sense is, that Job wished darknessto resume its dominion over the day, and rcdeem it to itself, and thus wholly to exclude the light.

If the word means to defile or pollute, the sense is, that he desired the death-shade to stain the day wholly black; to take out every ray of light, and to render it wholly obscure. Gesenius renders it in the former sense. The sense which Reiske and Dr. Good give to the word, "crush it,"is not found in the Hebrew. The word means to defile, stain, or pollute, in the following places, namely,: it is rendered "pollute"and "polluted"in Mal 1:7, Mal 1:12; Zep 3:1; Lam 4:14; Ezr 2:62; Neh 7:64; "defile"or "defiled"in Isa 59:3; Dan 1:8; Neh 13:29; and "stain"in Isa 63:3. It seems to me that this is the sense here, and that the meaning has been well explained by Schultens, that Job wished that his birthday should be involved in a deep "stain,"that it should be covered with clouds and storms, and made dark and dismal. This imprecation referred not only to the day on which he was born, but to each succeeding birthday. Instead of its being on its return a bright and cheerful day, he wished that it might be annually a day of tempests and of terrors; a day so marked that it wouId excite attention as especially gloomy and inauspicious. It was a day whose return conveyed no pleasure to his soul, and which he wished no one to observe with gratitude or joy.

Let a cloud dwell upon it - There is, as Dr. Good and others have remarked, much sublimity iu this expression. The Hebrew word rendered "a cloud" עננה ‛ănânâh occurs nowhere else in this form. It is the feminine form of the word ענן ‛ânân , "a cloud,"and is used "collectively"to denote "clouds;"that is, clouds piled on clouds; clouds "condensed, impacted, heaped together"(Dr. Good), and hence, the gathered tempest, the clouds assembled deep and dark, and ready to burst forth in the fury of a storm. Theodotion renders it συννεφέα sunnefea , "assembled clouds;"and hence, "darkness,"The Septuagint renders it γνόφος gnophos , "tempest,"or "thick darkness."So Jerome, "caligo."The word rendered "dwell upon it" שׁכן shâkan , means properly to "settle down,"and there to abide or dwell. Perhaps the original notion was that of fixing a tent, and so Schultens renders it, "tentorium figat super eo Nubes," "Let the cloud pitch its tent over it;"rendered by Dr. Good, "The gathered tempest pavilion over it!""This is an image,"says Schultens, "common among the Arabs."The sense is, that Job wished clouds piled on clouds to settle down on the day permanently, to make that day their abode, and to involve it in deep and eternal night.

Let the blackness of the day terrify it - Margin, "Or, Let them terrify it as those who have a bitter day."There has been great variety in the interpretation of this passage. Dr. Good renders it, "The blasts of noontide terrify it."Noyes, "Let whatever darkens the day terrify it."Herder, "The blackness of misfortune terrify it."Jerome, Et involvatur amaritudine, "let it be involved in bitterness."The Septuagint, καταραθείη ἡ ἡμέρα katarathein hē hēmera , "let the day be cursed."This variety has arisen from the difficulty of determining the sense of the Hebrew word used here and rendered "blackness," כמרירים kı̂mrı̂yrı̂ym . If it is supposed to be derived from the word כמר kâmar , to be warm, to be hot, to burn, then it would mean the deadly heats of the day, the dry and sultry blasts which prevail so much in sandy deserts. Some writers suppose that there is a reference here to the poisonous wind Samum or Samiel, which sweeps over those deserts, and which is so much dreaded in the beat of summer. "Men as well as animals are often suffocated with this wind. For during a great heat, a current of air often comes which is still hotter; and when human beings and animals are so exhausted that they almost faint away with the heat, it seems that this little addition quite deprives them of breath. When a man is suffocated with this wind, or when, as they say, his heart is burst blood is said to flow from his nose and ears two hours after his death. The body is said to remain long warm, to swell, to turn blue and green, and if the arm or leg is taken hold of to raise it up, the limb is said to come off."

Burder’ s Oriental customs, No. 176. From the testimony of recent travelers, however, it would seem that the injurious effects of this wind have been greatly exaggerated. If this interpretation be the true one, then Job wished the day of his birth to be frightful and alarming, as when such a poisonous blast should sweep along all day, and render it a day of terror and dread. But this interpretation does not well suit the parallelism. Others, therefore, understand by the word, "obscurations,"or whatever darkens the day. Such is the interpretation of Gesenius, Bochart, Noyes, and some others. According to this, the reference is to eclipses or fearful storms which cover the day in darkness. The noun here is not found elsewhere; but the "verb" כמר kâmar is used in the sense of being black and dark in Lain. v. 10: "Our skin was black like an oven, because of the terrible famine;"or perhaps more literally, "Our skin is scorched as with a furnace, from the burning heat of famine."

That which is burned becomes black, and hence, the word may mean that which is dark, obscure, and gloomy. This meaning suits the parallelism, and is a sense which the Hebrew will bear. Another interpretation regards the Hebrew letter כ ( k ) used as a prefix before the word כמרירים kı̂mrı̂yrı̂ym "bitterness,"and then the sense is, "according to the bitterness of the day;"that is, the greatest calamities which can happen to a day. This sense is found in several of the ancient versions, and is adopted by Rosenmuller. To me it seems that the second interpretation proposed best suits the connection, and that the meaning is, that Job wished that everything which could render the day gloomy and obscure might rest upon it. The Chaldee adds here,"Let it be as the bitterness of day - the grief with which Jeremiah was afflicted in being cut off from the house of the sanctuary, and Jonah in being cast into the sea of Tarshish."

Barnes: Job 3:6

As for "that night."Job, having cursed the day, proceeds to utter a malediction on the "night"also; see Job 3:3. This malediction extends to Job 3:9.

Let darkness seize upon it - Hebrew, Let it take it. Let deep and horrid darkness seize it as its own. Let no star arise upon it; let it be unbroken and uninterrupted gloom. The word "darkness,"however, does not quite express the force of the original. The word used here אפל 'ôphel is poetic, and denotes darkness more intense than is denoted by the word which is usually rendered "darkness" השׁך chôshek . It is a darkness accompanied with clouds and with a tempest. Herder understands it as meaning, that darkness should seize upon that night and bear it away, so that it should not be joined to the months of the year. So the Chaldee. But the true sense is, that Job wished so deep darkness to possess it, that no star would rise upon it; no light whatever be seen. A night like this Seneca beautifully describes in Agamemnon, verses 465ff:

Nox prima coeltum sparserat stellis,

Cum subito luna conditur, stellae cadunt;

In astra pontus tollitur, et coelum petit.

Nec una nox est, densa tenebras obruit

Caligo, et Omni luce subducta, fretum

Coelumque miscet ...

Premunt tenebrae lumina, et dirae stygis

Inferna nox est.

Let it not be joined unto the days of the year - Margin, "rejoice among."So Good and Noyes render it. The word used here יחד yı̂chad , according to the present pointing, is the apocopated future of חדה chādâh , "to rejoice, to be glad."If the pointing were different יחד yâchad it would be the future of יחד yachad , to be one; to be united, or joined to. The Masoretic points are of no authority, and the interpretation which supposes that the word means here to exult or rejoice, is more poetical and beautiful. It is then a representation of the days of the year as rejoicing together, and a wish is expressed that "that"night might never be allowed to partake of the general joy while the months rolled around. In this interpretation Rosenmuller and Gesenius concur. Dodwell supposes that there is an allusion to a custom among the ancients, by which inauspicious days were stricken from the calendar, and their place supplied by intercalary days. But there is no evidence of the existence of snell a custom in the time of Job.

Let it not come etc - Let it never be reckoned among the days which go to make up the number of the months. Let there be always a blank there; let its place always be lacking.

Barnes: Job 3:7

Lo, let that night be solitary - Dr. Good, "O! that night! Let it be a barren rock!"Noyes, "O let that night be unfruitful!"Herder, "Let that night be set apart by itself."The Hebrew word used here גלמוּד galmûd means properly "hard;"then sterile, barren, as of a hard and rocky soil. It does not mean properly solitary, but that which is unproductive and unfruitful. It is used of a woman who is barren, Isa 49:21, and also of that which is lean, famished, emaciated with hunger; Job 15:34; Job 30:3. According to this it means that that should be a night in which none would be born - a night of loneliness and desolation. According to Jerome, it means that the night should be solitary, lonely, and gloomy; a night in which no one would venture forth to make a journey, and in which none would come together to rejoice. Thus interpreted the night would resemble that which is so beautifully describe by Virgil, Aeneid vi. 268:

Ibant obscuri sola sub nocte per umbras,

Perque domos Ditis vacuas et inania regna.

It is probable, however, that the former is the correct interpretation.

Let no joyful voice come therein - Let there be no sound of praise and rejoicing. The Chaldee paraphrases this,"Let not the crowing of a cock be heard in it."The sense of the whole is, that Job wished that night to be wholly desolate. He wished there might be no assembling for amusement, congratulation, or praise, no marriage festivals, and no rejoicing at the birth of children; he would have it as noiseless, solitary, and sad, as if all animals and human beings were dead, and no voice were heard. It was a night hateful to him, and he would have it in no way remembered.

Barnes: Job 3:8

Let them curse it who curse the day - This entire verse is exceedingly difficult, and many different expositions have been given of it. It seems evident that it refers to some well-known class of persons, who were accustomed to utter imprecations, and were supposed to have the power to render a day propitious or unpropitious - persons who had the power of divination or enchantment. A belief in such a power existed early in the world, and has prevailed in all savage and semi-barbarous nations, and even in nations considerably advanced in civilization. The origin of this was a desire to look into futurity; and in order to accomplish this, a league was supposed to be made with the spirits of the dead, who were acquainted with the events of the invisible world, and who could be prevailed on to impart their knowledge to favored mortals. It was supposed, also, that by such union there might be a power exerted which would appear to be miraculous.

Such persons also claimed to be the favorites of heaven, and to be endowed with control over the elements, and over the destiny of men; to have the power to bless and to curse, to render propitious or calamitous. Balsaam was believed to be endowed with this power, and hence, he was sent for by Balak, king of Moab, to curse the Israelites; Num 22:5-6; see the notes at Isa 8:19. The practice of cursing the day, or cursing the sun, is said by Herodotus to have prevailed among a people of Africa, whom he calls the Atlantes, living in the vicinity of Mount Atlas. "Of all mankind,"says he, "of whom we have any knowledge, the Atlantes alone have no distinction of names; the body of the people are termed Atlantes, but their individuals have no appropriate appellation. When the sun is at the highest they heap on it reproaches and execrations, because their country and themselves are parched by its rays; book iv. 184. The same account of them is found in Pliny, Nat. His. v. 8: Solem orientem occidentemque dira imprecatione contuentur, ut exitialem ipsis agrisque. See also Strabo, Lib. xvii. p. 780. Some have supposed, also, that there may be an allusion here to a custom which seems early to have prevailed of hiring people to mourn for the dead, and who probably in their official lamentation bewailed or cursed the day of their calamity; compare Jer 9:17; 2Ch 35:25. But the correct interpretation is doubtless that which refers it to pretended prophets, priests, or diviners - who were supposed to have power to render a day one of ill omen. Such a power Job wished exerted over that unhappy night when he was born. He desired that the curses of those who had power to render a day unpropitious or unlucky, should rest upon it.

Who are ready to raise up their mourning - This is not very intelligible, and it is evident that our translators were embarrassed by the passage. They seem to have supposed that there was an allusion here to the practice of employing professional mourners, and that the idea is, that Job wished that they might be employed to howl over the day as inauspicious, or as a day of ill omen. The margin is, as in the Hebrew, "a leviathan."The word rendered "ready" עתידים ‛âthı̂ydı̂ym , means properly ready, prepared; and then practiced or skillful. This is the idea here, that they were practiced or skillful in calling up the "leviathan;"see Schultens "in loc."The word rendered in the text "mourning,"and in the margin "leviathan" לויתן lı̂vyâthân , in all other parts of the sacred Scriptures denotes an animal; see it explained in the notes at Isa 27:1, and more fully in the notes at Job 41: It usually denotes the crocodile, or some huge sea monster.

Here it is evidently used to represent the most fierce, powerful and frightful of all the animals known, and the allusion is to some power claimed by necromancers to call forth the most terrific monsters at their will from distant places, from the "vasty deep,"from morasses and impenetrable forests. The general claim was, that they had control over all nature; that they could curse the day, and make it of ill omen, and that the most mighty and terrible of land or sea monsters were entirely under their control. If they had such a power, Job wished that they would exercise it to curse the night in which he was born. On what pretensions they founded this claim is unknown. The power, however, of taming serpents, is practiced in India at this day; and jugglers bear around with them the most deadly of the serpent race, having extracted their fangs, and creating among the credulous the belief that they have control over the most noxious animals. Probably some such art was claimed by the ancients. and to some such pretension Job alludes here.

Barnes: Job 3:9

Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark - That is, be extinguished, so that it shall be total darkness - darkness not even relieved by a single star. The word here rendered "twilight" נשׁף nesheph means properly a breathing; and hence, the evening, when cooling breezes "blow,"or gently breathe. It is used however, to denote both the morning and the evening twilight, though here probably it means the latter. He wishes that the evening of that night, instead of being in any way illuminated, should "set in"with total darkness and continue so. The Septuagint renders it, "night.

Let it look for light, but have none - Personifying the night, and representing it as looking out anxiously for some ray of light. This is a beautiful poetic image - the image of "Night,"dark and gloomy and sad, anxiously looking out for a single beam or a star to break in upon its darkness and diminish its gloom.

Neither let it see the dawning of the day - Margin, more literally and more beautifully, "eyelids of the morning."The word rendered "dawning" עפעפים ‛aph‛aphı̂ym means properly "the eyelashes"(from עוּף ‛ûph "to fly"), and it is given to them from their flying or fluttering. The word rendered "day" שׁחר shachar means the aurora, the morning. The sun when he is above the horizon is called by the poets the eye of day; and hence, his earliest beams, before he is risen, are called the eyelids or eyelashes of the morning opening upon the world. This figure is common in the ancient Classics, and occurs frequently in the Arabic poets; see Schultens "in loc."Thus, in Soph. Antiq. 104, the phrase occurs, Ἁμέρας βλέφυρον Hameras blefaron . So in Milton’ s Lycidas,

"- Ere the high lawns appeared

Under the opening eyelids of the dawn,

We drive afield."

Job’ s wish was, that there might be no star in the evening twilight, and that no ray might illuminate that of the morning; that it might be enveloped in perpetual, unbroken darkness.

Barnes: Job 3:10

Because it shut not up ... - That is, because the accursed day and night did not do it. Aben Ezra supposes that God is meant here, and that the complaint of Job is that he did not close his mother’ s womb. But the more natural interpretation is to refer it to the Νυχθήμεροι Nuchthēmeroi - the night and the day which he had been cursing, on which he was born. Throughout the description the day and the night are personified, and are spoken of as active in introducing him into the world. He here curses them because they did not wholly prevent his birth.

Nor hid sorrow from mine eyes - By preventing my being born. The meaning is, that he would not have known sorrow if he had then died.

Barnes: Job 3:11

Why died I not from the womb? - Why did I not die as soon as I was born? Why were any pains taken to keep me alive? The suggestion of this question leads Job in the following verses into the beautiful description, of what he would have been if he had then died. He complains, therefore, that any pains were taken by his friends to keep him alive, and that he was not suffered peacefully to expire.

Gave up the ghost - A phrase that is often used in the English version of the Bible to denote death; Gen 49:33; Job 11:20; Job 14:10; Jer 15:9; Mat 27:50; Act 5:10. It conveys an idea, however, which is not necessarily in the original, though the idea in itself is not incorrect. The idea conveyed by the phrase is that of yielding up the "spirit"or "soul,"while the sense of the original here and elsewhere is simply "to expire, to die."

Barnes: Job 3:12

Why did the knees prevent me? - That is, the lap of the nurse or of the mother, probably the latter. The sense is, that if he had not been delicately and tenderly nursed, he would have died at once. He came helpless into the world, and but for the attention of others he would have soon died. Jahn supposes (Archae section 161) that it was a common custom for the father, on the birth of a son, to clasp the new-born child to his bosom, while music was heard to sound, and by this ceremony to declare it as his own. That there was some such recognition of a child or expression of paternal regard, is apparent from Gen 50:23. Probably, however, the whole sense of the passage is expressed by the tender care which is necessarily shown to the new-born infant to preserve it alive. The word rendered "prevent"here קדם qâdam , means properly to anticipate, to go before, as the English word "prevent"formerly did; and hence, it means to go to meet anyone in order to aid him in any way. There is much beauty in the word here. It refers to the provision which God has made in the tender affection of the parent to "anticipate"the needs of the child. The arrangement has been made beforehand. God has taken care when the feeble and helpless infant is born, that tender affection has been already created and prepared to meet it. It has not to be created then; it is not to be excited by the suffering of the child; it is already in existence as an active, powerful, and self-denying principle, to "anticipate"the needs of the newborn babe, and to save it from death.

Barnes: Job 3:13

For now should I have lain still - In this verse Job uses four expressions to describe the state in which be would have been if he had been so happy as to have died when an infant. It is evidently a very pleasant subject to him, and he puts it in a great variety of form. He uses thc words which express the most quiet repose, a state of perfect rest, a gentle slumber; and then in the next verses he says, that instead of being in the miserable condition in which he then was, he would have been in the same state with kings and the most illustrious men of the earth.

I should have lain still - - שׁכב shâkab . I should have been "lying down,"as one does who is taking grateful repose. This is a word of less strength than any of those which follow.

And been quiet - - שׁקט shâqaṭ . A word of stronger signification than that before used. It means to rest, to lie down, to have quiet. It is used of one who is never troubled, harassed, or infested by others, Jdg 3:11; Jdg 5:31; Jdg 8:25; and of one who has no fear or dread, Psa 76:9. The meaning is, that he would not only have lain down, but; would have been perfectly tranquil. Nothing would have harassed him, nothing would have given him any annoyance.

I should have slept - - ישׁן yâshên . This expression also is in advance of those before used. There would not only have been "quiet,"but there would have been a calm and gentle slumber. Sleep is often representcd as "the kinsman of death."Thus, Virgil speaks of it:

" Tum consanguineus Leti sopor - "

Aeneid vi. 278.

So Homer:

Enth' hupnō cumblēto chasignēto thanatoio -

Iliad, 14:231.

This comparsion is an obvious one, and is frequently used in the Classical writers. It is employed to denote the calmness, stillness, and quiet of death. In the Scriptures it frequently occurs, and with a significancy far more beautiful. It is there employed not only to denote the tranquility of death, but also to denote the Christian hopes of a resurrection and the prospect of being awakened out of the long sleep. We lie down to rest at night with the hopes of awaking again. We sleep calmly, with the expectation that it will be only a temporary repose, and that we shall be aroused, invigorated for augmented toil, and refreshed for sweeter pleasure. So the Christian lies down in the grave. So the infant is committed to the calm slumber of the tomb. It may be a sleep stretching on through many nights and weeks and years and centuries, and even cycles of ages, but it is not eternal. The eyes will be opened again to behold the beauties of creation; the ear will be unstoppod to hear the sweet voice of fricndship and the harmony of music; and the frame will be raised up beautiful and immortal to engage in the service of the God that made us; compare Psa 13:3; Psa 90:5; Joh 11:11; 1Co 15:51; 1Th 4:14; 1Th 5:10. Whether Job used the word in this sense and with this understanding, has been made a matter of question, and will be considered more fully in the examination of the passage in Job 19:25-27.

Then had I been at rest - Instead of the troubles and anxieties which I now experience. That is, he would have been lying in calm and honorable repose with the kings and princes of the earth.

Barnes: Job 3:14

With kings - Reposing as they do. This is the language of calm meditation on what would have been the consequence if he had died when he was an infant. He seems to delight to dwell on it. He contrasts it with his present situation. He pauses on the thought that that would have been an honorable repose. He would have been numbered with kings and princes. Is there not here a little spice of ambition even in his sorrows and humilation? Job had been an eminently rich man; a man greatly honored; an emir; a magistrate; one in whose presence even princes refrained talking, and before whom nobles held their peace; Job 29:9. Now he was stripped of his honors, and made to sit in ashes. But had he died when an infant, he would have been numbered with kings and courtsellers, and would have shared their lot. Death is repulsive; but Job takes comfort in the thought that he would have been associated with the most exalted and honorable among people. There is some consolation in the idea that when an infant dies he is associated with the most honored and exalted of the race; there is consolation in the reflection that when we die we shall lie down with the good and the great of all past times, and that though our bodies shall moulder back to dust, and be forgotten, we are sharing the same lot with the most beautiful, lovely, wise, pious, and mighty of the race. To Christians there is the richest of all consolations in the thought that they will sleep as their Savior did in the tomb, and that the grave, naturally so repulsive, has been made sacred and even attractive by being the place where the Redeemer reposed.

Why should we tremble to convey

Their bodies to the tomb?

There the dear flesh of Jesus lay,

And left a long perfume.

The graves of all his saints he blessed,

And softened every bed:

Where should the dying members rest

But with the dying Head?

And counsellors of the earth - Great and wise men who were qualified to give counsel to kings in times of emergency.

Which built desolate places for themselves - Gesenius supposes that the word used here ( חרבה chorbâh ) means palaces which would soon be in ruins. So Noyes renders it, "Who build up for themselves - ruins!"That is, they build splendid palaces, or perhaps tombs, which are destined soon to fall to ruin. Dr. Good renders it, "Who restored to themselves the ruined wastes;"that is, the princes who restored to their former magnificence the ruins of ancient cities, and built their palaces in them But it seems to me that the idea is different. It is, that kings constructed for their own burial, magnificent tombs or mausoleums, which were lonely and desolate places, where they might lie in still and solemn grandeur; compare the notes at Isa 14:18. Sometimes these were immense excavations from rocks; and sometimes they were stupendous structurcs built as tombs. What more desolate and lonely places could be conceived than the pyramids of Egypt - reared probably as the burial places of kings?

What more lonely and solitary than the small room in the center of one of those immense structures, where the body of the monarch is supposed to have been deposited? And what more emphatic than the expression - though"so nearly pleonastic that it may be omitted"("Noyes") - "for themselves?"To my view, that is far from being pleonastic. It is full of emphasis. The immense structure was made for "them."It was not to be a common burial-place; it was not for the public good; it was not to be an abode for the living and a contributor to their happiness: it was a matter of supreme selfishness and pride - an immense structure built only run themselves. With such persons lying in their places of lonely grandeur, Job felt it would be an honor to be associated. Compared with his present condition it was one of dignity; and he earnestly wished that it might have been his lot thus early to have been consigned to the fellowship of the dead. It may be some confirmation of this view to remark, that the land of Edom, near which Job is supposed to have lived, contains at this day some of the most wonderful sepulchral monuments of the world; comp the notes at Isa 17:1.

Barnes: Job 3:15

Or with princes that had gold - That is, he would have been united with the rich and the great. Is there not here too also a slight evidence of the fondness for wealth, which might have been one of the errors of this good man? Would it not seem that such was his estimate of the importance of being esteemed rich, that he would count it an honor to be united with the affluent in death, rather than be subjected to a condition of poverty and want among the living?

Who filled their houses with silver - Rosenmuller supposes that there is reference here to the custom among the ancients of burying treasures with the dead, and that the word "houses"refers to the tombs or mausoleums which they erected. That such a custom prevailed, there can be no doubt. Josephus informs us that large quantities of treasure were buried in the tomb with David, which afterward was taken out for the supply of an army; and Schultens ("in loc.") says that the custom prevailed extensively among the Arabs. The custom of burying valuable objects with the dead was practiced also among the aborigines of N. America, and is to this day practiced in Africa. If this be the sense here, then the idea of Job was, that he would have been in his grave united with those who even there were accompanied with wealth, rather than suffering the loss of all his property as he was among the living.

Barnes: Job 3:16

Or as an hidden untimely birth - As an abortion which is hid, or concealed; that is, which is soon removed from the sight. So the Psalmist, Psa 58:8 :

As a snail which melteth, let thom dissolve;

As the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun.

Septuagint ἔκτρωμα ektrōma , the same word which is used by Paul in 1Co 15:8, with reference to himself; see the notes at that place.

I had not been - I should have perished; I should not have been a man, as I now am, subject to calamity. The meaning is, that he would have been taken away and concealed, as such an untimely birth is, and that he would never have been numbered among the living and the suffering.

As infants which never saw light - Job expresses here no opinion of their future condition, or on the question whether such infants had immortal souls. He is simply saying that his lot would have been as theirs was, and that he would have been saved from the sorrows which he now experienced.

Barnes: Job 3:17

There the wicked cease - from "troubling."In the grave - where kings and princes and infants lie. This verse is often applied to heaven, and the language is such as will express the condition of that blessed world. But as used by Job it had no such reference. It relates only to the grave. It is language which beautifully expresses the condition of the dead, and the "desirableness"even of an abode in the tomb. They who are there, are free from the vexations and annoyances to which people are exposed in this life. The wicked cannot torture their limbs by the fires of persecution, or wound their feelings by slander, or oppress and harass them in regard to their property, or distress them by thwarting their plans, or injure them by impugnlug their motives. All is peaceful and calm in the grave, and "there"is a place where the malicious designs of wicked people cannot reach us. The object of this verse and the two following is! to show the "reasons"why it was desirable to be in the grave, rather than to live and to suffer the ills of this life. We are not to suppose that Job referred exclusively to his own case in all this. tie is describing, in general, the happy condition of the dead, and we have no reason to think that he had been particularly annoyed by wicked people. But the pious often are, and hence, it should be a matter of gratitude that there is one place, at least, where the wicked cannot annoy the good; and where the persecuted, the oppressed, and the slandered may lie down in peace.

And there the weary be at rest - Margin, "Wearied in strength."The margin is in accordance with the Hebrew. The meaning is, those whose strength is exhausted; who are worn down by the toils and eares of life, and who feel the need of rest. Never was more beautiful language employed than occurs in this verse. What a charm such language throws even over the grave - like strewing flowers, and planting roses around the tomb! Who should fear to die, if prepared, when such is to be the condition of the dead? Who is there that is not in some way troubled by the wicked - by their thoughtless, ungodly life; by persecution, contempt, and slander? compare 2Pe 2:8; Psa 39:1. Who is there that is not at some time weary with his load of care, anxiety, and trouble? Who is there whose strength does not become exhausted, and to whom rest is not grateful and refreshing? And who is there, therefore, to whom, if prepared for heaven, the grave would not be a place of calm and grateful rest? And though true religion will not prompt us to wish that we had lain down there in early childhood, as Job wished, yet no dictate of piety is violated when "we"look forward with calm delight to the time when we may repose where the wicked cease from troubling, and where the weary be at rest. O grave, thou art a peaceful spot! Thy rest is calm: thy slumbers are sweet.

Nor pain, nor grief, nor anxious fear

Invade thy bounds. No mortal woes

Can reach the peaceful sleeper here,

While angels watch the soft repose.

So Jesus slept; God’ s dying Son

Passed through the grave, and blest the bed.

Barnes: Job 3:18

There the prisoners rest together - Herder translates this, "There the prisoners rejoice in their freedom."The Septuagint strangely enough, "There they of old ( ὁ αἰώνιοι hoi aiōnioi ) assembled together ( ὁμοθυμαδόν homothumadon ) have not heard the voice of the exactor."The Hebrew word שׁאן shâ'an means "to rest, to be quiet, to be tranquil"; and the sense is, that they are in the grave freed from chains and oppressions.

They hear not the voice of the oppressor - Of him who exacted taxes, and who laid on them heavy burdens, and who imprisoned them for imaginary crimes. He who is bound in chains, and who has no other prospect of release, can look for it in the grave and will find it there. Similar sentiments are found respecting death in Seneca, ad Marcian, 20: " Mots omnibus finis, multis remedium, quibusdam votum; haec servitutem invito domino remittit; haec captivorum catenas levat; haec a carcere reducit, quos exire imperium impofens vetuerat; haec exulibus, in pairtam semper animum oculosque tendentibus, ostendit, nibil interesse inter quos quisque jaceat; haec, ubi res communes fortuna male divisit, et aequo jure genitos allure alii donavit, exaequat omnia; haec est, quae nihil quidquam alieno fecit arbitrio; haec est, ea qua nemo humilitatem guam sensit; haec est, quae nuili paruit ."The sense in Job is, that all are at liberty in death. Chains no longer bind; prisons no longer incarccrate; the voice of oppression no longer alarms.

Poole: Job 3:1

and cursed his day to wit, his birthday, as is evident from Job 3:3 , which is called simply a man’ s day , Hos 7:5 ; which also some others, through the same infirmity, and in the same circumstances, have cursed, as we see, Jer 20:14 . In vain do some men endeavour to excuse this and the following speeches of Job, who afterwards is reproved by God and severely accuseth himself for them, Job 38:2 40:4 42:3,6 . And yet he doth not proceed so far as to curse or blaspheme God, but makes the devil a liar in his prognostics. But although he doth not break forth into direct and downright reproaches of God, yet he makes secret and indirect reflections upon God’ s providence. His curse was sinful, both because it was vain, being applied to an unreasonable thing, which was not capable of blessing and cursing, and to a day that was past, and so out of the reach of all curses; and because it was applied to one of God’ s creatures, all which were and are in themselves very good, and pronounced blessed by God; and so they are, if we do not turn them into curses; and because it casts a blame upon God for bringing that day, and for giving him that life which that day brought into the world. He pronounceth that day an unhappy, woeful, and cursed day, not in itself, but with respect to himself.

Poole: Job 3:3

Let the remembrance of that day be utterly lost; yea, I heartily wish that it had never been. Such wishes are apparently foolish and impatient, and yet have been sometimes forced from wise and good men in grievous distresses, not as if they expected any effect of them, but only to show their abhorrency of life, and to express the intolerableness of their grief, and to give some vent to their passions. In which it was said with joy and triumph, as happy tidings. Compare Jer 20:15 . Conceived; or rather, brought forth, as this word is used, 1Ch 4:17 ; for the time of conception is unknown commonly to women themselves, and doth not use to be reported among men, as this day is supposed to be.

Poole: Job 3:4

I wish the sun had never risen upon that day to make it day, or, which is all one, that it had never been; and whensoever that day returns, I wish it may be black, and gloomy, and uncomfortable, and therefore execrable and odious to all men.

From above i.e. from heaven; either,

1. By causing the light of the sun which is in heaven to shine upon it. So it agrees both with the foregoing and following branches of this verse. Or,

2. By blessing and favouring it, or by giving his blessings to men upon it. Let it be esteemed by all an unlucky and comfortless day. Or, Let not God require it, i. e. bring it again in its course, as other days return. In this sense God is said to require that which is past, Ecc 3:15 . Compare Job 3:3,6 .

Poole: Job 3:5

Darkness and the shadow of death i.e. a black and dark shadow, like that of the place of the dead, which is a land of darkness, and where the light is darkness , as Job explains this very phrase, Job 10:21,22 ; or so gross and palpable darkness, that by its horrors and damps may take away men’ s spirits and lives.

Stain it i.e. take away its beauty and glory, and make it abominable, as a filthy thing. Or,

challenge it i.e. take and keep the entire possession of it, so as the light may not have the least share in it.

Terrify it to wit, the day, i.e. men in it. Let it be always observed as a frightful and dismal day.

Poole: Job 3:6

Let darkness seize upon it i. e. constant and extraordinary darkness, without the least glimmering of light from the moon or stars.

Joined unto the days of the year i.e. reckoned as one, or a part of one, of them. The night is distinguished from the artificial day, but it is a part of the natural day, which consists of twenty-four hours. Or rather, let it not rejoice among the days , &c. Joy here, and terror, Job 3:5 , are poetically and figuratively ascribed to the day or night with respect to men, who either rejoice or are affrighted in it. Let it be a sad, and as it were a funeral, day.

Let it not come into the number of the months i.e. to be one of those nights which go to the making up of the months.

Poole: Job 3:7

Solitary i.e. destitute of all society of men meeting and feasting together, which commonly was done at night, suppers being the most solemn meals among divers ancient nations. See Mar 6:21 Luk 14:16 Joh 12:2 Rev 19:9,17 .

Let no joyful voice neither of the bride and bridegroom, nor any that celebrate their nuptials, or any other merry solemnity.

Poole: Job 3:8

That curse the day i.e. their day, to wit, their birthday; for the pronoun is here omitted for the metre’ s sake; for this and the following chapters are written in verse, as all grant. So the sense is, when their afflictions move them to curse their own birthday, let them remember mine also, and bestow some curses upon it. Or the day of their distress and trouble, which sometimes is called simply the day, as Oba 1:12 . Or the day of the birth or death of that person, whose funerals are celebrated by the hired mourners, who in their solemn lamentations used to curse the day that gave them such a person, whom they should so suddenly lose; and therefore it had been better never to have enjoyed him, and to curse the day in which he died as an unlucky and execrable day. Or, the day , i.e. the daylight; which to some persons is a hateful thing, and the object of their curses, namely, to lewd persons and thieves, to whom the morning light is even as the shadow of death , Job 24:17 ; as also to persons oppressed with deep melancholy, as it is here implied, Job 3:20 . So the sense is this, They who use to curse the day only, but generally love and bless the night, yet let this night be as abominable and execrable to them as the day-time generally is.

Who are ready to raise up their mourning who are brimful of sorrow, and always ready to pour out their cries, and tears, and complaints, and with them curses, as men in great passions frequently do; or, such mourning men, or mourning women, whose common employment it was, and who were hired to mourn, and therefore were always ready to do so upon funeral occasions; of which see 2Ch 35:25 Jer 9:17,18,20 Eze 30:2 Joe 1:15 Amo 5:16 Mat 9:23 . And this sense suits with the use of the last word in Hebrew writers, of which a plain and pertinent instance is given by the learned Mercer. But because that word is commonly used in another sense for the leviathan, both in this book and elsewhere in Scripture, as Psa 74:14 104:26 Isa 27:1 , and because this very phrase of raising the leviathan is used afterward, Job 41:25 , others render the words thus, who are prepared or ready to raise the leviathan . It is evident that the leviathan was a great and dreadful fish, or sea monster, though there be some disagreement about its kind or quality, and that the raising of or endeavouring to catch the leviathan was a dangerous and terrible work, as is plain from Job 41 . And therefore those seamen who have been generally noted for great swearers and cursers, especially when their passions of rage or fear are raised, being now labouring to catch this sea monster, and finding themselves and their vessel in great danger from him, they fall to their old trade of swearing and cursing, and curse the day wherein they were born, and the day in which they ventured upon this most hazardous and terrible work. Others understand this leviathan mystically, as it is used Isa 27:1 , for the great enemy of God’ s church and people, called there also the dragon , to wit, the devil, whom the magicians both now do, and formerly did, use to raise with fearful curses and imprecations. Not as if Job did justify this practice, but only it is a rash and passionate wish, that they who pour forth so many curses undeservedly, would bestow their deserved curses upon this day.

Poole: Job 3:9

Let the stars which are the glory and beauty of the night, to render it amiable and delightful to men,

be covered with thick darkness nd that both in the evening twilight, as is here expressed, when the stars begin to arise and shine forth; and also in the further progress of the night, even till the morning begins to dawn, as the following words imply.

Let it look for light, but have none let its darkness be aggravated with the disappointment of its hopes and expectations of light. He ascribes sense or reasoning to the night, by a poetical fiction usual in all writers.

The dawning of the day Heb. the eyelids of the day , i.e. the morningstar, which ushers in the day, and the beginning, and consequently the progress, of the morning light, and the day following. Let this whole natural day, consisting of night and day, be blotted out of the catalogue of days, as he wished before.

Poole: Job 3:10

Because it shut not up to wit, the night or the day; to which those things are ascribed which were done by others in them, as is frequent in poetical writings, such as this is. Or, he , i.e. God; whom in modesty and reverence he forbears to name. Yet he doth not curse God for his birth, as the devil presaged, but only wisheth that the day of his birth might have manifest characters of a curse impressed upon it. Shut not up the doors ; that it might either never have conceived me, or at least never have brought me forth.

Mother’ s which word is here fitly supplied, both out of Job 1:21 31:18 , where it is expressed; and by comparing other places where it is necessarily to be understood, though the womb only be mentioned, as Job 10:19 Psa 58:3 Isa 48:8 Jer 1:5 .

Nor hid sorrow from mine eyes because it did not keep me from entering into this miserable life, and seeing, i.e. feeling, or experiencing, (as that word is oft used,) those bitter sorrows under which I now groan.

Poole: Job 3:11

From the womb i.e. as soon as ever I was born, or come out of the womb. And the same thing is expressed in other words, which is an elegancy usual both in the Hebrew and in other languages.

Poole: Job 3:12

Why did the knees prevent me? why did the midwife or nurse receive me, and lay me upon her knees, and did not suffer me to fall upon the bare ground, and there to lie, in a neglected and forlorn condition, till merciful death had taken me out of this miserable world, into which the cruel kindness of my mother and midwife hath betrayed me?

Why the breasts that I should suck? Why did the breasts prevent me, (which may be fitly understood out of the former member,) to wit, from perishing through hunger, or supply me, that I should have what to suck ? Seeing my mother had not a miscarrying womb, but did unhappily bring me forth why had she not dry breasts? or why were there any breasts for me which I might suck? Thus Job most unthankfully and unworthily despiseth and traduceth these wonderful and singular mercies of God towards poor helpless infants, because of the present inconveniencies which he had by means of them.

Poole: Job 3:13

Quiet free from all those torments of my body and mind which now oppress me.

Poole: Job 3:14

With kings I had then been as happy as the proudest monarchs, who after all their great achievements and enjoyments go down into their graves, where I also should have been sweetly reposed.

Which built desolate places for themselves which, to show their great wealth and power, or to leave behind them a glorious name, rebuilt ruined cities, or built new cities and palaces, and other monuments, in places where before there was mere solitude and wasteness.

Poole: Job 3:16

Hidden undiscerned and unregarded.

Untimely birth born before the due time, and therefore extinct.

I had not been to wit, in the land of the living, of which he here speaketh.

As infants which never saw light being stifled and dead before they were born.

Poole: Job 3:17

There i.e. in the grave, which though not expressed, yet is clearly implied in the foregoing verses.

The wicked cease from troubling the great oppressors and troublers of the world cease from all those vexations, rapines, and murders which here they procured.

There the weary be at rest those who were here molested and tired out with their tyrannies, now quietly sleep with them, or by them.

Poole: Job 3:18

The prisoners rest together i.e. one as well as another; they who were kept in the strongest chains and closest prisons, and condemned to the most hard and miserable slavery, rest as well as those who were captives in much better circumstances. Or,

in like manner ( as this word oft signifies,) as those oppressors and oppressed do.

The oppressor or, exacter, or taskmaster , who urgeth and forceth them by cruel threatenings and stripes to greater diligence in the works to which they are condemned. See Exo 3:7 5:6,10,13 . Job meddles not here with their eternal state after death, or the sentence and judgment of God against wicked men, of which he speaks hereafter; but only speaks of their freedom from worldly troubles, which is the only matter of his complaint and present discourse.

Haydock: Job 3:1

Sleep. So death is often styled. Olli dura quies oculos et ferreus urget

Somnus: in æternam clauduntur lumina noctem. (Virgil, Æneid x.)

Haydock: Job 3:1

Cursed his day. Job cursed the day of his birth, not by way of wishing evil to any thing of God's creation; but only to express in a stronger manner his sense of human miseries in general, and of his own calamities in particular. (Challoner) ---

He has these only in view: though, in another light, it is better for a man to be born, and to undergo any misery, that he may obtain eternal rewards. (Haydock) ---

Some allowances must be made for extreme pain, and for the style of the Eastern (Calmet) poetry. (Haydock) ---

Jeremias, (xx. 14.) Habacuc, (i. 2.) the psalmist, and even our Saviour in his agony, made use of such strong expressions, Matthew xxvi. 39., and xxvii. 46. Some heretics accuse Job of impatience and blasphemy. The devil, therefore came off with victory; and the praises given to Job's patience are false. He might offend by some degree of exaggeration. (Calmet) ---

But even that is by no means clear. Time past could not be recalled, nor receive any injury by the maledictions. (Haydock)

Haydock: Job 3:7

Praise, by the appearance of the stars, chap. xxxviii. 7. (Calmet)

Haydock: Job 3:8

Day. The nations of Ethiopia, under the line, curse the sun as their greatest enemy. (Strabo xvii.) (Pliny, [Natural History?] v. 8.) ---

They also brave the fury of the leviathan or crocodile, chap. xl. 27., and xli. 1., and Psalm lxxiii. 14. The natives of Tentyra, upon the Nile, were supposed to be a terror to that monster, or they were very courageous in entangling and pursuing it. (Seneca, q. 4. 2.) (Pliny viii. 25.) ---

Leviathan. Protestants, "their mourning." De Dieu rejects this interpretation, substituting "and thou, leviathan, rouse up," &c. The fathers generally understand the devil to be thus designated. Septuagint, "he who is about to seize the great whale," (Haydock) or fish, which they also explain of the conflict of Satan with Jesus Christ." (Origen, &c.)

Haydock: Job 3:10

Nor took. Septuagint, "for it would then have freed my eyes from labour."

Haydock: Job 3:11

In the. Hebrew, "from the womb," (Haydock) or as soon as I was born. (Calmet) ---

He seems to have lost sight of original sin, (ver. 1.) or there might be some method of having it remitted to children unborn, which we do not know. (Haydock)

Haydock: Job 3:12

Knees, by my father or grandfather, Genesis xxx 3. (Homer, Iliad ix.) (Calmet)

Haydock: Job 3:14

Consuls. Hebrew, "counsellors," or any in great authority. Septuagint, "kings, the counsellors of the land, who rejoiced, boasting of their swords." The same word, choraboth, (Haydock) means both swords and solitudes. (Du Hamel) ---

Those great ones had prepared their own tombs, which were usually in solitary places; (Calmet) or they had filled all with their extensive palaces; and removed the people to a distance. (Haydock)

Haydock: Job 3:15

Houses, while alive; (Calmet) or their tombs were thus enriched with silver, (Menochius) as this practice was not uncommon, ver. 22. (Josephus, [Antiquities?] xiii. 15.) ---

Marcian forbade it. St. Chrysostom complains it subsisted in his time. (Orat. Annæ.) (Calmet)

Haydock: Job 3:16

Light; dying in the womb. He expresses a desire that he had been thus prevented from feeling his present miseries and danger of sin. (Haydock)

Haydock: Job 3:17

Tumult. In the grave they can no longer disturb the world. (Menochius) ---

In strength. Septuagint, "in body." Both heroes and labourers then find rest, (Calmet) if they have lived virtuously. (Haydock)

Haydock: Job 3:18

Bound in chains, like incorrigible slaves, (Calmet) or debtors. (Cocceius.) ---

These were formerly treated with great severity, Luke xii. 59. (Calmet)

Gill: Job 3:1

After this opened Job his mouth,.... order to speak, and began to speak of his troubles and afflictions, and the sense he had of them; for though, this phrase may sometimes signify to speak aloud, clearly and distinctly, and with great freedom and boldness, yet here it seems to design no more than beginning to speak, or breaking silence after it had been long kept: be spake after his first trial and blessed the name of the Lord, and upon his second, and reproved his wife for her foolish speaking; but upon the visit of his three friends, and during the space of seven days, a profound silence was kept by him and them; and when he perceived that they chose not to speak to him, and perhaps his distemper also decreased, and his pain somewhat abated, he broke out into the following expressions:

and cursed his day: he did not curse his God, as Satan said he would, and his wife advised him to: nor did he curse his fellow creatures, or his friends, as wicked men in passion are apt to do, nor did he curse himself, as profane persons often do, when any evil befalls them; but he cursed his day; not the day on which his troubles came upon him, for there were more than one, and they were still continued, but the day of his birth, as appears from Job 3:3; and so the Syriac and Arabic versions add here, "in which he was born"; and what is meant by cursing it may be learnt from his own words in the following verses, the substance of which is, that he wished either it had never been, or he had never been born; but since that was impossible, that it might be forgotten, and never observed or had in esteem, but be buried oblivion and obscurity, and be branded with a black mark, as an unhappy day, for ever: the word ^s signifies, he made light of it, and spoke slightly and contemptibly of it; he disesteemed it, yea, detested it, and could not bear to think of it, and desired that it might be disrespected by God and men; so that there is no need of such questions, whether it is in the power of man to curse? and whether it is lawful to curse the creature? and whether a day is capable of a curse? The frame of mind in which Job was when he uttered these words is differently represented; some of the Jewish writers will have it that he denied the providence of God, and thought that all things depended upon the stars, or planets which rule on the day a man is born, and therefore cursed his stars; whereas nothing is more evident than that Job ascribes all that befell him to the purpose and providence of God, Job 23:14; some say he was in the utmost despair, and had no hope of eternal life and salvation, but the contrary to this is clear from Job 13:15; and many think he had lost all patience, for which he was so famous; but if he had, he would not have been so highly spoken of as he is in Jam 5:11; it is true indeed there may be a mixture of weakness with respect to the exercise of that grace at this time, and which may appear in some after expressions of his; yet were it not for these and the like, as we could not have such an idea of his sorrows and afflictions, and of that quick sense and perception he had of them, so neither of his exceeding great patience in enduring them as he did; and, besides, what impatience he was guilty of was not only graciously forgiven, but he through the grace of God was enabled to conquer; and patience had its perfect work in him, and he persevered therein to the end; though after all he is not to be excused of weakness and infirmity, since he is blamed not only by Elihu, but by the Lord himself; yea, Job himself owned his sin and folly, and repented of it, Job 40:4.

Gill: Job 3:2

And Job spake, and said. Or "answered and said" ^t, though not a word was spoken to him by his friends; he answered to his own calamity, and to their silence, as Schmidt observes; and this word is sometimes used when nothing goes before, to which the answer is, as many Jewish writers observe, as in Exo 32:27; Jarchi interprets it, "he cried", and so some others ^u render it: from henceforwards to Job 42:6, this book is written in a poetical style, in Hebrew metre as is thought, which at present is pretty much unknown, even to the Jews themselves; some have been of opinion, that the following discourses between Job and his friends were not originally delivered in metre, but were put into this form by the penman or writer of the book; but of this we cannot be certain; in the Targum in the king of Spain's Bible it is, "and Job sung and said".

Gill: Job 3:3

Let the day perish wherein I was born,.... Here begins Job's form of cursing his day, and which explains what is meant by it; and it may be understood either of the identical day of his birth, and then the sense is, that he wished that had never been, or, in other words, that he had never been born; and though these were impossible, and Job knew it, and therefore such wishes may seem to be in vain, yet Job had a design herein, which was to show the greatness of his afflictions, and the sense he had of them: or else of his birthday, as it returned year after year; and then his meaning is, let it not be kept and observed with any solemnity, with feasting and other expressions of joy, as the birthdays of great personages especially were, and his own very probably had been, since his children's were, Job 1:4; but now he desires it might not be so for the future, but be entirely disregarded; he would have it perish out of his own memory, and out of the memory of others, and even be struck out of the calendar, and not be reckoned with the days of the month and year, Job 3:6; both may be intended, both the very day on which he was born, and the yearly return of it:

and the night in which it was said, there is a man child conceived; that is, let that night perish also; he wishes it had not been, or he had not been conceived, or for the future be never mentioned, but eternally forgotten: Job goes back to his conception, as being the spring of his sorrows; for this he knew as well as David, that he was shapen in iniquity, and conceived in sin, see Job 14:4; but rather, since the particular night or time of conception is not ordinarily, easily, and exactly known by women themselves, and much less by men; and more especially it could not be told what sex it was, whether male or female that was conceived, and the tidings of it could not be brought by any; it seems better with Aben Ezra to render the word ^w, "there is a man child brought forth", which used to be an occasion of joy, Joh 16:21; and so the word is used to bear or bring forth, 1Ch 4:17; see Jer 20:15; and, according to him, it was a doubt whether Job was born in the day or in the night; but be it which it will, if he was born in the day, he desires it might perish; and if in the night, he wishes the same to that; though the words may be rendered in a beautiful and elegant manner nearer the original, "and the night which said, a man child is conceived" ^x; representing, by a prosopopoeia, the night as a person conscious of the conception, as an eyewitness of it, and exulting at it, as Schultens observes.

Gill: Job 3:4

Let that day be darkness,.... Not only dark, but darkness itself, extremely dark; and which is to be understood not figuratively of the darkness of affliction and calamity; this Job would not wish for, either for himself, who had enough of that, or for others; but literally of gross natural darkness, that was horrible and dreadful, as some ^x render it: this was the reverse of what God said at the creation, "let there be light", Gen 1:3, and there was, and he called it day; but Job wishes his day might be darkness, as the night; either that it had been always dark, and never become day, or in its return be remarkably dark and gloomy:

let not God regard it, from above; that is, either God who is above, and on high, the High and Holy One, the Most High God, and who is higher than the highest, and so this is a descriptive character of him; or else this respects the place where he is, the highest heaven, where is his throne, and from whence he looks and takes notice of the sons of men, and of all things done below: and this wish must be understood consistent with his omniscience, who sees and knows all persons and things, even what are done in the dark, and in the darkest days; for the darkness and the light are alike to him; and as consistent with his providence, which is continually exercised about persons and things on earth without any intermission, even on every day in the year; and was it to cease one day, hour, or moment, all would be dissolved, and be thrown into the utmost confusion and disorder: but Job means the smiles of his providence, which he wishes might be restrained on this day; that he would not cause his sun in the heavens to shine out upon it, nor send down gentle and refreshing showers of rain on it; in which sense he is said to care for and regard the land of Canaan, Deu 11:11; where the same word is used as here; or the sense is, let it be so expunged from the days of the year, the when it is sought for, and if even it should be by God himself, let it not be found; or let him not "seek" ^y after it, to do any good upon it:

neither let the light shine upon it; the light of the sun, or the morning light, as the Targum, much less the light at noonday; even not the diurnal light, as Schmidt interprets it, in any part of the day: light is God's creature, and very delightful and desirable; the best things, and the most comfortable enjoyments, whether temporal, spiritual, or eternal, are expressed by it; and, on the other hand, a state of darkness is the most uncomfortable, and therefore the worst and most dismal things and states are signified by it.

Gill: Job 3:5

Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it,.... Let there be such darkness on it as on persons when dying, or in the state of the dead; hence the sorest afflictions, and the state of man in unregeneracy, are compared unto it, Psa 23:4; let there be nothing but foul weather, dirt, and darkness in it, which may make it very uncomfortable and undesirable; some render the word, "let darkness and the shadow of death redeem it" ^z, challenge and claim it as their own, and let light have no share or property in it:

let a cloud dwell upon it; as on Mount Sinai when the law was given; a thick dark cloud, even an assemblage of clouds, so thick and close together, that they seem but one cloud which cover the whole heavens, and obscure them, and hinder the light of the sun from shining on the earth; and this is wished to abide not for an hour or two, but to continue all the day:

let the blackness of the day terrify it; let it be frightful to itself; or rather, let the blackness be such, or the darkness of it such gross darkness, like that as was felt by the Egyptians; that the inhabitants of the earth may be terrified with it, as Moses and the Israelites were at Mount Sinai, at the blackness, tempest, thunders, and lightnings, there seen and heard: as some understand this of black vapours exhaled by the sun, with which the heavens might be filled, so others of sultry weather and scorching heat, which is intolerable: others render the words, "let them terrify it as the bitternesses of the day" ^a; either with bitter cursings on it, or through bitter calamities in it; or, "as those who have a bitter ^b day", as in the margin of our Bibles, and in others.

Gill: Job 3:6

As for that night,.... The night of conception; Job imprecated evils on the day he was born, now on the night he was conceived in, the returns of it:

let darkness seize upon it; let it not only he deprived of the light of the moon and stars, but let an horrible darkness seize upon it, that it may be an uncommon and a terrible one:

let it not be joined unto the days of the year; the solar year, and make one of them; or, "let it not be one among them" ^c, let it come into no account, and when it is sought for, let it not appear, but be found wanting; "or let it not joy" or "rejoice among the days of the year" ^d, as Jarchi, Aben Ezra, and others interpret it, or be a joyful one, or anything joyful done or enjoyed in it:

let it not come into the number of the months; meaning not the intercalated months, as Sephorno, nor the feasts of the new moon, as others, but let it not serve to make up a month, which consists of so many days and nights, according to the course of the moon; the sense both of this and the former clause is, let it be struck out of the calendar.

Gill: Job 3:7

Lo, let that night be solitary,.... Let there be no company for journeys, or doing any business; no meetings of friends, neighbours, or relations on it, for refreshment, pleasure, and recreation, after the business of the day is over, as is frequently done; let there be no associations of this kind, or any other: in the night it was usual to have feasts on various accounts, and especially on account of marriage; but now let there be none, let there be as profound a silence as if all creatures, men and beasts, were dead, and removed from off the face of the earth, and nothing to be heard and seen on it: or, "let it be barren" or "desolate" ^e, so R. Simeon bar Tzemach interprets it, and refers to Isa 49:21; that is, let no children be born in it, and so no occasion for any joy on that account, as follows; let it be as barren as a flint ^f:

let no joyful voice come therein; which some even carry to the nocturnal singing of saints in private or in public assemblies, and to the songs of angels, those morning stars in heaven; but it seems rather to design natural or civil joy, or singing on civil accounts; as on account of marriage, and particularly on account of the birth of a child, and especially his own birth, and even any expressions of joy on any account; and that there might not be so much as the crowing of a cock heard, as the Targum has it.

Gill: Job 3:8

Let them curse it that curse the day,.... Their own day, either their birthday, or any day on which evil befalls them; and now such as are used to this, Job would have them, while they were cursing their own day, to throw some curses upon his; or that curse the daylight in general, as adulterers and murderers, who are said to rebel against the light, see Job 24:13; and as some Ethiopians, who lived near Arabia, and so known to Job, who supposed there was no God, and used to curse the sun when it rose and set, as various writers relate ^g, called by others ^h Atlantes; or it may design such persons who were hired at funerals, to mourn for the dead, and who, in their doleful ditties and dirges, used to curse the day on which the person was born whom they lamented; or it may be rather the day on which he died; hence it follows:

who are ready to raise up their mourning; who were expert at the business, and who could raise up a howl, as the Irish now do, or make a lamentation for the dead when they pleased; such were the mourning women in Jer 9:17; and those that were skilful of lamentation, Amo 5:16; some render the words, "who are ready to raise up Leviathan" ⁱ, and interpret it either of the whale, which, when raised up by the fishermen, they are in danger of their vessels being overturned, and their lives lost, and then they curse the day that ever they entered into such service, and exposed themselves to such danger; or of fish in general, and of fishermen cursing and swearing when they are unsuccessful: some understand this of astrologers, magicians, and enchanters, raising spirits, and particularly the devil, who they think is meant by Leviathan; but it seems best with a little alteration from Gussetius, and Schultens after him, to render the words thus,"let the cursers of the day fix a name upon it; let those that are ready "to anything, call it" the raiser up of Leviathan;''that is, let such who either of themselves are used to curse days, or are employed by others to do it, brand this night with some mark of infamy; let them ascribe all dreadful calamities and dismal things unto it, as the source and spring of them; which may be signified by Leviathan, that being a creature most formidable and terrible, of which an account is given in the latter part of this book; but many Jewish writers ^k render it "mourning", as we do.

Gill: Job 3:9

Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark,.... Either of the morning or evening twilight; both may be meant, rather the latter, because of the following clause; the sense is, let not these appear to adorn the heavens, and to relieve the darkness of the night, and make it more pleasant and delightful, as well as to be useful to travellers and sailors:

let it look for light, but have none; that is, either for the light of the moon and stars, to shine in the night till daybreak, or for the light of the sun at the time when it arises; but let it have neither; let the whole time, from sun setting to sunrising, from one twilight to another, be one continued gross and horrible darkness; here, by a strong and beautiful figure, looking is ascribed to the night:

neither let it see the dawning of the day; or, "let it not see the eyelids of the morning" ^l, or what we call "peep of day"; here, in very elegant language, the dawn of morning light is expressed, which is like the opening of an eye and its lids, quick and vibrating, when light is let in and perceived; or this may be interpreted of the sun, the eye of the morning and of light, and of its rays, which, when first darted, are like the opening of the eyelids.

Gill: Job 3:10

Because it shut not up the doors of my mother's womb,.... Or "of my belly" ^m, or "womb"; which Aben Ezra interprets of the navel, by which the infant receives its food and nourishment before it is born, and which, if closed, he must have died in embryo; but rather it is to be understood of his mother's womb, called his, because he was conceived and bore in it, and was brought forth from it; and the sense is, that he complains of the night, either that it did not close his mother's womb, and hinder the conception of him, as Gersom, Sephorno, Bar Tzemach, and others, and is the usual sense of the phrase of closing the womb, and which is commonly ascribed to God, Gen 20:17 1Sa 1:5; which Job here attributes to the night, purposely avoiding to make mention of the name of God, that he might not seem to complain of him, or directly point at him; or else the blame laid on that night is, that it did not so shut up the doors of his mother's womb, that he might not have come out from thence into the world, wishing that had been his grave, and his mother always big with him, as Jarchi, and which sense is favoured by Jer 20:17; a wish cruel to his mother, as well as unnatural to himself:

nor hid sorrow from mine eyes; which it would have done, had it done that which is complained of it did not; had it he could not have perceived it experimentally, endured the sorrows and afflictions he did from the Chaldeans and Sabeans, from Satan, his wife, and friends; and had never known the trouble of loss of substance, children, and health, and felt those pains of body and anguish of mind he did; these are the reasons of his cursing the day of his birth, and the night of his conception.

Gill: Job 3:11

Why died I not from the womb?.... That is, as soon as he came out of it; or rather, as soon as he was in it, or from the time that he was in it; or however, while he was in it, that so he might not have come alive out of it; which sense seems best to agree both with what goes before and follows after; for since his conception in the womb was not hindered, he wishes he had died in it; and so some versions render it to this sense ⁿ:

why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly? since he died not in the womb, which was desirable to him, he wishes that the moment he came out of it he had expired, and is displeased because it was not so, see Jer 20:17; thus what is the special favour of Providence, to be taken out of the womb alive, and preserved, he wishes not to have enjoyed, see Psa 22:9.

Gill: Job 3:12

Why did the knees prevent me?.... Not of the mother, as Jarchi, but of the midwife, who received him into her lap, and nourished and cherished him, washed him with water, salted, and swaddled him; or it may be of his father, with whom it was usual to take the child on his knees as soon as born, see Gen 50:23; which custom obtained among the Greeks and Romans ^o; hence the goddess Levana ^p had her name, causing the father in this way to own his child; his concern is, that he did not fall to the ground as he came out of his mother's womb, and with that fall die; and that he was prevented from falling by the officious knees of the midwife; that he was not suffered to fall, and be left there, without having any of the usual things done to him for the comfort and preservation of life, which was sometimes the case, Eze 16:4,

or why the breasts that I should suck? since a miscarrying womb was not given, and death did not seize him immediately upon birth, but all proper care was taken to prevent it, he asks, why was there milk in the breasts of his mother or nurse to suckle and nourish him? why were there not dry breasts, such as would afford no milk, that so he might have been starved? thus he wishes the kindest things in nature and Providence had been withheld from him.

Gill: Job 3:13

For now should I have lain still, and been quiet,.... Signifying, that if the above had been his case, if he had died as soon as born, or quickly after, then he would have been laid in the grave, where he would have lain as still as on a bed; for such is the grave to dead bodies as a bed is to those that lie down and sleep upon it; a place of ease and quiet, where there is freedom from all care and thought, from all trouble, anxiety, and distress; nay, more so than on a bed, where there is often tossing to and fro, and great disquietude, but none to the body in the grave, that is still and silent, where there is no uneasiness nor disturbance, see Job 17:13,

I should have slept; soundly and quietly, which persons do not always upon their beds; sometimes they cannot sleep at all, and when they do, they are frequently distressed with uneasy thoughts, frightful dreams, and terrifying visions, Job 4:13; but death is a sound sleep until the resurrection morn, which Job had knowledge of, and faith in, and so considered the state of the dead in this light; death is often in Scripture expressed by sleeping, Dan 12:2; which refers not to the soul, which in a separate state is active and vigorous, and always employed; but to the body, which, as in sleep, so in death, is deprived of the senses, and the exercise of them; on which account there is a great likeness between sleep and death, and out of which a man awakes brisk and cheerful, as the saints will at the time of their resurrection, which will be like an awaking out of sleep:

then had I been at rest; from all toil and labour, from all diseases and pains of body, from all troubles of whatsoever kind, and particularly from those he now laboured under; see Gill on Job 3:17.

Gill: Job 3:14

With the kings and counsellors of the earth,.... From whom he might descend, he being a person of great distinction and figure; and so, had he died, he would have been buried in the sepulchres of his ancestors, and have lain in great pomp and state: or rather this he says, to observe that death spares none, that neither the power of kings, who have long hands, nor the wisdom of counsellors, who have long heads, can secure them from death; and that after death they are upon a level with others; and even he suggests, that children that die as soon as born, and have made no figure in the world, are equal to them:

which built desolate places for themselves; either that rebuilt houses and cities that had lain in ruins, or built such in desolate places, where there had been none before, or formed colonies in places before uninhabited; and all this to get a name, and to perpetuate it to posterity: or rather sepulchral monuments are meant, such as the lofty pyramids of the Egyptians, and superb mausoleums of others; which, if not built in desolate places, yet are so themselves, being only the habitations of the dead, and so they are called the desolations of old, Eze 26:20; and this is the sense of many interpreters ^q; if any man desires, says Vansleb ^r, a prospect and description of such ancient burying places, let him think on a boundless plain, even, and covered with sand, where neither trees, nor grass, nor houses, nor any such thing, is to be seen.

Gill: Job 3:15

Or with princes that had gold,.... A large abundance of it while they lived, but now, being dead, were no longer in the possession of it, but on a level with those that had none; nor could their gold, while they had it, preserve them from death, and now, being dead, it was no longer theirs, nor of any use unto them; these princes, by this description of them, seem to be such who had not the dominion over any particular place or country, but their riches lay in gold and silver, as follows:

who filled their houses with silver; had an abundance of it, either in their coffers, which they hoarded up, or in the furniture of their houses, which were much of it of silver; they had large quantities of silver plate, as well as of money; but these were of no profit in the hour of death, nor could they carry them with them; but in the grave, where they were, those were equal to them, of whom it might have been said, silver and gold they had none.

Gill: Job 3:16

Or as an hidden untimely birth,.... Or "hid, as one born out of time", as Mr. Broughton reads it; the Septuagint use the same word as the apostle does, when he says the like of himself, 1Co 15:8; the word has the signification of "falling" ^s, and designs an abortive, which is like to fruit that falls from the tree before it is ripe; and this may be said to be "hidden", either in the belly, as the Targum, or however from the sight of man, it being not come to any proper shape, and much less perfection; now Job suggests, that if he had not lain with kings, counsellors, and princes, yet at least he should have been as an abortion, and that would have been as well to him: then

I had not been; or should have been nothing, not reckoned anything; should not have been numbered among beings, but accounted as a nonentity, and should have had no subsistence or standing in the world at all:

as infants which never saw light; and if not like an untimely birth, which is not come to any perfection, yet should have been like infants, which, though their mothers have gone their full time with them, and they have all their limbs in perfection and proportion, yet are dead, or stillborn, their eyes have never been opened to see any light; meaning not the light of the law, as the Targum, but the light of the sun, or the light of the world, see Ecc 6:3; infants used to be buried in the wells or caves of the mummies ^t.

Gill: Job 3:17

There the wicked cease from troubling,.... At death, and in the grave; such who have been like the troubled sea, that cannot rest, have always been either devising or doing mischief while living, in the grave can do neither; there is no work nor device there; such who are never easy, and cannot sleep unless they do mischief, when dead have no power to do any, and are quite still and inactive; such who have been troublers of good men, as profane persons by their ungodly lives, false teachers by their pernicious doctrines and blasphemies, cruel persecutors by their hard speeches, bitter calumnies and reproaches, and severe usage; those, when they die themselves, cease from giving further trouble, or when the righteous die, they can disturb them no more; yea, a good man at death is not only no more troubled by wicked men, but no more by his own wicked heart, nor any more by that wicked one Satan; there and then all these cease from giving him any further molestation:

and there the weary be at rest; wicked men, either who here tire and weary themselves with committing sin, to which they are slaves and drudges, and especially with persecuting and troubling the saints, shall rest front such acts of sin and wickedness, of which they will be no more capable; or else good men, who are weary of sin, and long to be rid of it, to whom it is a burden, and under which they groan, and are weary of the troubles and afflictions they meet with in the world; and what with one thing and another are weary of their lives, and desire to depart and be with Christ; these at death and in the grave are at rest, their bodies from toil and labour, and from all painful disorder, and pressing afflictions, and from all the oppressions and vexations of wicked and ungodly men; their souls rest in the arms of Jesus, from sin and all consciousness of it, from the temptations of Satan, from all doubts and fears, and every spiritual enemy, by whom they can be no more annoyed: some render the words, "there rest the labours of strength" ^u: such toils are over that break the strength of men; or "the labours of violence" ^w, which are imposed upon them through violence, by cruel and imperious men; but at death and in the grave will cease and be no more, even labour of all sorts; see Rev 14:13.

Gill: Job 3:18

There the prisoners rest together,.... "Are at ease", as Mr. Broughton renders the words; such who while they lived were in prison for debt, or were condemned to the galleys, to lead a miserable life; or such who suffered bonds and imprisonment for the sake of religion, at death their chains are knocked off, and they are as much at liberty, and enjoy as much ease, as the dead that never were prisoners; and not only rest together with those who were their fellow prisoners, but with those who never were in prison, yea, with those who cast them into it; for there the prisoners and those that imprisoned them are upon a level, enjoying equal ease and liberty:

they hear not the voice of the oppressor; or "exactor" ^x; neither of their creditors that demanded their debt of them, and threatened them with a prison, or that detained them in it; nor of the jail keeper that gave them hard words as well as stripes; nor of cruel taskmasters, who kept them to hard service in prison, and threatened them severely if they did not perform it, like the taskmasters in Egypt, Exo 5:11; but, in the grave, the blustering, terrifying, voice of such, is not heard.

Commentary -- Verse Notes / Footnotes

NET Notes: Job 3:1

¹ sn The previous chapters (1-2) were prose narrative, this chapter, however, commences the poetic section of the book (chs. 3-41) containing the cycles of speeches.

² sn The detailed introduction to the speech with “he opened his mouth” draws the readers attention to what was going to be said. As the introduction to the poetic speech that follows (3:3-26), vv. 1-2 continue the prose style of chapters 1-2. Each of the subsequent speeches is introduced by such a prose heading.

³ tn The verb “cursed” is the Piel preterite from the verb קָלַל (qalal); this means “to be light” in the Qal stem, but here “to treat lightly, with contempt, curse.” See in general H. C. Brichto, The Problem of “Curse” in the Hebrew Bible (JBLMS); and A. C. Thiselton, “The Supposed Power of Words in the Biblical Writings,” JTS 25 (1974): 283-99.

⁴ tn Heb “his day” (so KJV, ASV, NAB). The Syriac has “the day on which he was born.” The context makes it clear that Job meant the day of his birth. But some have tried to offer a different interpretation, such as his destiny or his predicament. For this reason the Syriac clarified the meaning for their readers in much the same way as the present translation does by rendering “his day” as “the day he was born.” On the Syriac translation of the book of Job, see Heidi M. Szpek, Translation Technique in the Peshitta to Job (SBLDS).

NET Notes: Job 3:2

¹ tn The text has וַיַּעַן (vayya’an), literally, “and he answered.” The LXX simply has “saying” for the entire verse. The Syriac, Targum, and Greek A have what the MT has. “[Someone] answered and said” is phraseology characteristic of all the speeches in Job beginning with Satan in 1:9. Only in 40:1 is it employed when God is speaking. No other portion of the OT employs this phraseology as often or as consistently.

NET Notes: Job 3:3

¹ tn The relative clause is carried by the preposition with the resumptive pronoun: “the day [which] I was born in it” meaning “the day on which I was born” (see GKC 486-88 §155.f, i).

² tn The verb is the Niphal imperfect. It may be interpreted in this dependent clause (1) as representing a future event from some point of time in the past – “the day on which I was born” or “would be born” (see GKC 316 §107.k). Or (2) it may simply serve as a preterite indicating action that is in the past.

³ tn The MT simply has “and the night – it said….” By simple juxtaposition with the parallel construction (“on which I was born”) the verb “it said” must be a relative clause explaining “the night.” Rather than supply “in which” and make the verb passive (which is possible since no specific subject is provided, but leaves open the question of who said it), it is preferable to take the verse as a personification. First Job cursed the day; now he cursed the night that spoke about what it witnessed. See A. Ehrman, “A Note on the Verb ‘amar,” JQR 55 (1964/65): 166-67.

⁴ tn The word is גֶּבֶר (gever, “a man”). The word usually distinguishes a man as strong, distinct from children and women. Translations which render this as “boy” (to remove the apparent contradiction of an adult being “conceived” in the womb) miss this point.

⁵ sn The announcement at birth is to the fact that a male was conceived. The same parallelism between “brought forth/born” and “conceived” may be found in Ps 51:7 HT (51:5 ET). The motifs of the night of conception and the day of birth will be developed by Job. For the entire verse, which is more a wish or malediction than a curse, see S. H. Blank, “‘Perish the Day!’ A Misdirected Curse (Job 3:3),” Prophetic Thought, 61-63.

NET Notes: Job 3:4

¹ tn The first two words should be treated as a casus pendens (see D. J. A. Clines, Job [WBC], 69), referred to as an extraposition in recent grammarians.

² sn This expression by Job is the negation of the divine decree at creation – “Let there be light,” and that was the first day. Job wishes that his first day be darkness: “As for that day, let there be darkness.” Since only God has this prerogative, Job adds the wish that God on high would not regard that day.

³ tn The verb דָּרַשׁ (darash) means “to seek, inquire,” and “to address someone, be concerned about something” (cf. Deut 11:12; Jer 30:14,17). Job wants the day to perish from the mind of God.

⁴ tn The verb is the Hiphil of יָפַע (yafa’), which means here “cause to shine.” The subject is the term נְהָרָה (nÿharah,“light”), a hapax legomenon which is from the verb נָהַר (nahar, “to gleam” [see Isa 60:5]).

NET Notes: Job 3:5

¹ sn The translation of צַלְמָוֶת (tsalmavet, “shadow of death”) has been traditionally understood to indicate a dark, death shadow (supported in the LXX), but many scholars think it may not represent the best etymological analysis of the word. The word may be connected to an Arabic word which means “to be dark,” and an Akkadian word meaning “black.” It would then have to be repointed throughout its uses to צַלְמוּת (tsalmut) forming an abstract ending. It would then simply mean “darkness” rather than “shadow of death.” Or the word can be understood as an idiomatic expression meaning “gloom” that is deeper than חֹשֶׁךְ (khoshekh; see HALOT 1029 s.v. צַלְמָוֶת). Since “darkness” has already been used in the line, the two together could possibly form a nominal hendiadys: “Let the deepest darkness….” There is a significant amount of literature on this; one may begin with W. L. Michel, “SLMWT, ‘Deep Darkness’ or ‘Shadow of Death’?” BR 29 (1984): 5-20.

² tn The verb is גָּאַל (ga’al, “redeem, claim”). Some have suggested that the verb is actually the homonym “pollute.” This is the reading in the Targum, Syriac, Vulgate, and Rashi, who quotes from Mal 1:7,12. See A. R. Johnson, “The Primary Meaning of ga’al,” VTSup 1 (1953): 67-77.

³ tn The expression “the blackness of the day” (כִּמְרִירֵי יוֹם, kimrire yom) probably means everything that makes the day black, such as supernatural events like eclipses. Job wishes that all ominous darknesses would terrify that day. It comes from the word כָּמַר (kamar, “to be black”), related to Akkadian kamaru (“to overshadow, darken”). The versions seem to have ignored the first letter and connected the word to מָרַר (marar, “be bitter”).

NET Notes: Job 3:6

¹ tn The verb is simply לָקַח (laqakh, “to take”). Here it conveys a strong sense of seizing something and not letting it go.

² tn The pointing of the verb is meant to connect it with the root חָדָה (khadah, “rejoice”). But the letters in the text were correctly understood by the versions to be from יָחַד (yakhad, “to be combined, added”). See G. Rendsburg, “Double Polysemy in Genesis 49:6 and Job 3:6,” CBQ 44 (1982): 48-51.

³ sn The choice of this word for “moons,” יְרָחִים (yÿrakhim) instead of חֳדָשִׁים (khodashim) is due to the fact that “month” here is not a reference for which an exact calendar date is essential (in which case חֹדֶשׁ [khodesh] would have been preferred). See J. Segal, “‘yrh’ in the Gezer ‘Calendar,’” JSS 7 (1962): 220, n. 4. Twelve times in the OT יֶרַח (yerakh) means “month” (Exod 2:2; Deut 21:13; 33:14; 1 Kgs 6:37, 38; 8:2; 2 Kgs 15:13; Zech 11:8; Job 3:6; 7:3; 29:2; 39:2).

NET Notes: Job 3:7

¹ tn The particle הִנֵּה (hinneh, “behold”) in this sentence focuses the reader’s attention on the statement to follow.

² tn The word גַּלְמוּד (galmud) probably has here the idea of “barren” rather than “solitary.” See the parallelism in Isa 49:21. In Job it seems to carry the idea of “barren” in 15:34, and “gloomy” in 30:3. Barrenness can lead to gloom.

³ tn The word is from רָנַן (ranan, “to give a ringing cry” or “shout of joy”). The sound is loud and shrill.

⁴ tn The verb is simply בּוֹא (bo’, “to enter”). The NIV translates interpretively “be heard in it.” A shout of joy, such as at a birth, that “enters” a day is certainly heard on that day.

NET Notes: Job 3:8

¹ tn Not everyone is satisfied with the reading of the MT. Gordis thought “day” should be “sea,” and “cursers” should be “rousers” (changing ’alef to ’ayin; cf. NRSV). This is an unnecessary change, for there is no textual problem in the line (D. J. A. Clines, Job [WBC], 71). Others have taken the reading “sea” as a personification and accepted the rest of the text, gaining the sense of “those whose magic binds even the sea monster of the deep” (e.g., NEB).

sn Those who curse the day are probably the professional enchanters and magicians who were thought to cast spells on days and overwhelm them with darkness and misfortune. The myths explained eclipses as the dragon throwing its folds around the sun and the moon, thus engulfing or swallowing the day and the night. This interpretation matches the parallelism better than the interpretation that says these are merely professional mourners.

² tn The verb is probably “execrate, curse,” from קָבַב (qavav). But E. Ullendorff took it from נָקַב (naqav, “pierce”) and gained a reading “Let the light rays of day pierce it (i.e. the night) apt even to rouse Leviathan” (“Job 3:8,” VT 11 [1961]: 350-51).

³ tn The verbal adjective עָתִיד (’atid) means “ready, prepared.” Here it has a substantival use similar to that of participles. It is followed by the Polel infinitive construct עֹרֵר (’orer). The infinitive without the preposition serves as the object of the preceding verbal adjective (GKC 350 §114.m).

⁴ sn Job employs here the mythological figure Leviathan, the monster of the deep or chaos. Job wishes that such a creation of chaos could be summoned by the mourners to swallow up that day. See E. Ullendorff, “Job 3:8,” VT 11 (1961): 350-51.

NET Notes: Job 3:9

¹ tn Heb “the stars of its dawn.” The word נֶשֶׁף (neshef) can mean “twilight” or “dawn.” In this context the morning stars are in mind. Job wishes that the morning stars – that should announce the day – go out.

² tn The verb “wait, hope” has the idea of eager expectation and preparation. It is used elsewhere of waiting on the Lord with anticipation.

³ tn The absolute state אַיִן (’ayin, “there is none”) is here used as a verbal predicate (see GKC 480 §152.k). The concise expression literally says “and none.”

⁴ sn The expression is literally “the eyelids of the morning.” This means the very first rays of dawn (see also Job 41:18). There is some debate whether it refers to “eyelids” or “eyelashes” or “eyeballs.” If the latter, it would signify the flashing eyes of a person. See for the Ugaritic background H. L. Ginsberg, The Legend of King Keret (BASORSup), 39; see also J. M. Steadman, “‘Eyelids of Morn’: A Biblical Convention,” HTR 56 (1963): 159-67.

NET Notes: Job 3:10

¹ tn The subject is still “that night.” Here, at the end of this first section, Job finally expresses the crime of that night – it did not hinder his birth.

² sn This use of doors for the womb forms an implied comparison; the night should have hindered conception (see Gen 20:18 and 1 Sam 1:5).

³ tn The Hebrew has simply “my belly [= womb].” The suffix on the noun must be objective – it was the womb of Job’s mother in which he lay before his birth. See however N. C. Habel, “The Dative Suffix in Job 33:13,” Bib 63 (1982): 258-59, who thinks it is deliberately ambiguous.

⁴ tn The word עָמָל (’amal) means “work, heavy labor, agonizing labor, struggle” with the idea of fatigue and pain.

NET Notes: Job 3:11

¹ sn Job follows his initial cry with a series of rhetorical questions. His argument runs along these lines: since he was born (v. 10), the next chance he had of escaping this life of misery would have been to be still born (vv. 11-12, 16). In vv. 13-19 Job considers death as falling into a peaceful sleep in a place where there is no trouble. The high frequency of rhetorical questions in series is a characteristic of the Book of Job that sets it off from all other portions of the OT. The effect is primarily dramatic, creating a tension that requires resolution. See W. Watson, Classical Hebrew Poetry, 340-41.

² tn The negative only occurs with the first clause, but it extends its influence to the parallel second clause (GKC 483 §152.z).

³ tn The two verbs in this verse are both prefix conjugations; they are clearly referring to the past and should be classified as preterites. E. Dhorme (Job, 32) notes that the verb “I came out” is in the perfect to mark its priority in time in relation to the other verbs.

⁴ tn The translation “at birth” is very smooth, but catches the meaning and avoids the tautology in the verse. The line literally reads “from the womb.” The second half of the verse has the verb “I came out/forth” which does double duty for both parallel lines. The second half uses “belly” for the womb.

⁵ tn The two halves of the verse use the prepositional phrases (“from the womb” and “from the belly I went out”) in the temporal sense of “on emerging from the womb.”

NET Notes: Job 3:12

¹ tn The verb קִדְּמוּנִי (qiddÿmuni) is the Piel from קָדַם (qadam), meaning “to come before; to meet; to prevent.” Here it has the idea of going to meet or welcome someone. In spite of various attempts to connect the idea to the father or to adoption rites, it probably simply means the mother’s knees that welcome the child for nursing. See R. de Vaux, Ancient Israel, 42.

sn The sufferer is looking back over all the possible chances of death, including when he was brought forth, placed on the knees or lap, and breastfed.

² tn There is no verb in the second half of the verse. The idea simply has, “and why breasts that I might suck?”

³ sn The commentaries mention the parallel construction in the writings of Ashurbanipal: “You were weak, Ashurbanipal, you who sat on the knees of the goddess, queen of Nineveh; of the four teats that were placed near to your mouth, you sucked two and you hid your face in the others” (M. Streck, Assurbanipal [VAB], 348).

⁴ tn Heb “that I might suckle.” The verb is the Qal imperfect of יָנַק (yanaq, “suckle”). Here the clause is subordinated to the preceding question and so function as a final imperfect.

NET Notes: Job 3:13

¹ tn The word עַתָּה (’attah, “now”) may have a logical nuance here, almost with the idea of “if that had been the case…” (IBHS 667-68 §39.3.4f). However, the temporal “now” is retained in translation since the imperfect verb following two perfects “suggests what Job’s present state would be if he had had the quiet of a still birth” (J. E. Hartley, Job [NICOT], 95, n. 23). Cf. GKC 313 §106.p.

² tn The copula on the verb indicates a sequence for the imperfect: “and then I would….” In the second half of the verse it is paralleled by “then.”

³ tn The text uses a combination of the perfect (lie down/sleep) and imperfect (quiet/rest). The particle עַתָּה (’attah, “now”) gives to the perfect verb its conditional nuance. It presents actions in the past that are not actually accomplished but seen as possible (GKC 313 §106.p).

⁴ tn The last part uses the impersonal verb “it would be at rest for me.”

NET Notes: Job 3:14

¹ tn The difficult term חֳרָבוֹת (khoravot) is translated “desolate [places]”. The LXX confused the word and translated it “who gloried in their swords.” One would expect a word for monuments, or tombs (T. K. Cheyne emended it to “everlasting tombs” [“More Critical Gleanings in Job,” ExpTim 10 (1898/99): 380-83]). But this difficult word is of uncertain etymology and therefore cannot simply be made to mean “royal tombs.” The verb means “be desolate, solitary.” In Isa 48:21 there is the clear sense of a desert. That is the meaning of Assyrian huribtu. It may be that like the pyramids of Egypt these tombs would have been built in the desert regions. Or it may describe how they rebuilt ruins for themselves. He would be saying then that instead of lying here in pain and shame if he had died he would be with the great ones of the earth. Otherwise, the word could be interpreted as a metonymy of effect, indicating that the once glorious tomb now is desolate. But this does not fit the context – the verse is talking about the state of the great ones after their death.

NET Notes: Job 3:15

¹ tn The expression simply has “or with princes gold to them.” The noun is defined by the noun clause serving as a relative clause (GKC 486 §155.e).

² tn Heb “filled their houses.” There is no reason here to take “houses” to mean tombs; the “houses” refer to the places the princes lived (i.e., palaces). The reference is not to the practice of burying treasures with the dead. It is simply saying that if Job had died he would have been with the rich and famous in death.

NET Notes: Job 3:16

¹ tn The verb is governed by the interrogative of v. 12 that introduces this series of rhetorical questions.

² tn The verb is again the prefix conjugation, but the narrative requires a past tense, or preterite.

³ tn Heb “hidden.” The LXX paraphrases: “an untimely birth, proceeding from his mother’s womb.”

⁴ tn The noun נֵפֶל (nefel, “miscarriage”) is the abortive thing that falls (hence the verb) from the womb before the time is ripe (Ps 58:9). The idiom using the verb “to fall” from the womb means to come into the world (Isa 26:18). The epithet טָמוּן (tamun, “hidden”) is appropriate to the verse. The child comes in vain, and disappears into the darkness – it is hidden forever.

⁵ tn The word עֹלְלִים (’olÿlim) normally refers to “nurslings.” Here it must refer to infants in general since it refers to a stillborn child.

⁶ tn The relative clause does not have the relative pronoun; the simple juxtaposition of words indicates that it is modifying the infants.

NET Notes: Job 3:17

¹ sn The reference seems to be death, or Sheol, the place where the infant who is stillborn is either buried (the grave) or resides (the place of departed spirits) and thus does not see the light of the sun.

² sn The wicked are the ungodly, those who are not members of the covenant (normally) and in this context especially those who oppress and torment other people.

³ tn The parallelism uses the perfect verb in the first parallel part, and the imperfect opposite it in the second. Since the verse projects to the grave or Sheol (“there”) where the action is perceived as still continuing or just taking place, both receive an English present tense translation (GKC 312 §106.l).

⁴ tn Here the noun רֹגז (rogez) refers to the agitation of living as opposed to the peaceful rest of dying. The associated verb רָגַז (ragaz) means “to be agitated, excited.” The expression indicates that they cease from troubling, meaning all the agitation of their own lives.

⁵ tn The word יָגִיעַ (yagia’) means “exhausted, wearied”; it is clarified as a physical exhaustion by the genitive of specification (“with regard to their strength”).

NET Notes: Job 3:18

¹ tn “There” is not in the Hebrew text, but is supplied from the context.

² tn The LXX omits the verb and translates the noun not as prisoners but as “old men” or “men of old time.”

³ tn The verb שַׁאֲנָנוּ (sha’ananu) is the Pilpel of שָׁאַן (sha’an) which means “to rest.” It refers to the normal rest or refreshment of individuals; here it is contrasted with the harsh treatment normally put on prisoners.

⁴ sn See further J. C. de Moor, “Lexical Remarks Concerning yahad and yahdaw,” VT 7 (1957): 350-55.

⁵ tn Or “taskmaster.” The same Hebrew word is used for the taskmasters in Exod 3:7.

Geneva Bible: Job 3:1

After this opened ^{( a )} Job his mouth, and ^{( b )} cursed his day.

^{( a )} The seven days ended, (Job 2:13).

^{( b )} Here Job begins to feel his great imperfection in this battle between the spirit and the flesh, (Rom 7:18) and after a manner yields yet in the end he gets victory though he was in the mean time greatly wounded.

Geneva Bible: Job 3:3

Let the day ^{( c )} perish wherein I was born, and the night [in which] it was said, There is a man child conceived.

^{( c )} Men should not be weary of their life and curse it, because of the infinities that it is subject to, but because they are given to sin and rebellion against God.

Geneva Bible: Job 3:4

Let that day be darkness; let not God ^{( d )} regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it.

^{( d )} Let it be put out of the number of days, and let it not have the sight of the sun to separate it from the night.

Geneva Bible: Job 3:5

Let darkness and the ^{( e )} shadow of death stain it; let a cloud dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it.

^{( e )} That is, most obscure darkness, which makes them afraid of death that they are in it.

Geneva Bible: Job 3:8

Let them curse it that curse the day, who are ^{( f )} ready to raise up their mourning.

^{( f )} Who curse the day of their birth, let them lay that curse on this night.

Geneva Bible: Job 3:9

Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark; let it look for light, but [have] none; neither let it ^{( g )} see the dawning of the day:

^{( g )} Let it be always night, and never see day.

Geneva Bible: Job 3:11

^{( h )} Why died I not from the womb? [why] did I [not] give up the ghost when I came out of the belly?

^{( h )} This, and that which follows declares, that when man gives place to his passions, he is not able to stay or keep measure, but runs headlong into all evil unless God calls him back.

Geneva Bible: Job 3:13

For now should I have ^{( i )} lain still and been quiet, I should have slept: then had I been at rest,

^{( i )} The vehemency of his afflictions made him utter these words as though death was the end of all miseries, and as if there were no life after this, which he speaks not as though it were so, but the infirmities of his flesh caused him to break out in this error of the wicked.

Geneva Bible: Job 3:14

With kings and counsellors of the earth, which built ^{( k )} desolate places for themselves;

^{( k )} He notes the ambition of them who for their pleasure as it were change the order of nature, and build in most barren places, because they would by this make their names immortal.

Geneva Bible: Job 3:17

There the wicked ^{( l )} cease [from] troubling; and there the weary be at rest.

^{( l )} That is, by death the cruelty of the tyrants has ceased.

Geneva Bible: Job 3:18

[There] the ^{( m )} prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor.

^{( m )} All they who sustain any kind of calamity and misery in this world: which he speaks after the judgment of the flesh.

Commentary -- Verse Range Notes

TSK Synopsis: Job 3:1-26

1 Job curses the day and services of his birth.

13 The ease of death.

20 He complains of life, because of his anguish.

MHCC: Job 3:1-10

For seven days Job's friends sat by him in silence, without offering consolidation: at the same time Satan assaulted his mind to shake his confidence, and to fill him with hard thoughts of God. The permission seems to have extended to this, as well as to torturing the body. Job was an especial type of Christ, whose inward sufferings, both in the garden and on the cross, were the most dreadful; and arose in a great degree from the assaults of Satan in that hour of darkness. These inward trials show the reason of the change that took place in Job's conduct, from entire submission to the will of God, to the impatience which appears here, and in other parts of the book. The believer, who knows that a few drops of this bitter cup are more dreadful than the sharpest outward afflictions, while he is favoured with a sweet sense of the love and presence of God, will not be surprised to find that Job proved a man of like passions with others; but will rejoice that Satan was disappointed, and could not prove him a hypocrite; for though he cursed the day of his birth, he did not curse his God. Job doubtless was afterwards ashamed of these wishes, and we may suppose what must be his judgment of them now he is in everlasting happiness.

MHCC: Job 3:11-19

Job complained of those present at his birth, for their tender attention to him. No creature comes into the world so helpless as man. God's power and providence upheld our frail lives, and his pity and patience spared our forfeited lives. Natural affection is put into parents' hearts by God. To desire to die that we may be with Christ, that we may be free from sin, is the effect and evidence of grace; but to desire to die, only that we may be delivered from the troubles of this life, savours of corruption. It is our wisdom and duty to make the best of that which is, be it living or dying; and so to live to the Lord, and die to the Lord, as in both to be his, Rom 14:8. Observe how Job describes the repose of the grave; There the wicked cease from troubling. When persecutors die, they can no longer persecute. There the weary are at rest: in the grave they rest from all their labours. And a rest from sin, temptation, conflict, sorrows, and labours, remains in the presence and enjoyment of God. There believers rest in Jesus, nay, as far as we trust in the Lord Jesus and obey him, we here find rest to our souls, though in the world we have tribulation.

Matthew Henry: Job 3:1-10

Long was Job's heart hot within him; and, while he was musing, the fire burned, and the more for being stifled and suppressed. At length he spoke with his tongue, but not such a good word as David spoke after a long pause: Lord, make me to know my end, Psa 39:3, Psa 39:4. Seven days the prophet Ezekiel sat down astonished with the captives, and then (probably on the sabbath day) the word of the Lord came to him, Eze 3:15, Eze 3:16. So long Job and his friends sat thinking, but said nothing; they were afraid of speaking what they thought, lest they should grieve him, and he durst not give vent to his thoughts, lest he should offend them. They came to comfort him, but, finding his afflictions very extraordinary, they began to think comfort did not belong to him, suspecting him to be a hypocrite, and therefore they said nothing. But losers think they may have leave to speak, and therefore Job first gives vent to his thoughts. Unless they had been better, it would however have been well if he had kept them to himself. In short, he cursed his day, the day of his birth, wished he had never been born, could not think or speak of his own birth without regret and vexation. Whereas men usually observe the annual return of their birthday with rejoicing, he looked upon it as the unhappiest day of the year, because the unhappiest of his life, being the inlet into all his woe. Now,

I. This was bad enough. The extremity of his trouble and the discomposure of his spirits may excuse it in part, but he can by no means be justified in it. Now he has forgotten the good he was born to, the lean kine have eaten up the fat ones, and he is filled with thoughts of the evil only, and wishes he had never been born. The prophet Jeremiah himself expressed his painful sense of his calamities in language not much unlike this: Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me! Jer 15:10. Cursed be the day wherein I was born, Jer 20:14, etc. We may suppose that Job in his prosperity had many a time blessed God for the day of his birth, and reckoned it a happy day; yet now he brands it with all possible marks of infamy. When we consider the iniquity in which we were conceived and born we have reason enough to reflect with sorrow and shame upon the day of our birth, and to say that the day of our death, by which we are freed from sin (Rom 6:7), is far better. Ecc 7:1. But to curse the day of our birth because then we entered upon the calamitous scene of life is to quarrel with the God of nature, to despise the dignity of our being, and to indulge a passion which our own calm and sober thoughts will make us ashamed of. Certainly there is no condition of life a man can be in in this world but he may in it (if it be not his own fault) so honour God, and work out his own salvation, and make sure a happiness for himself in a better world, that he will have no reason at all to wish he had never been born, but a great deal of reason to say that he had his being to good purpose. Yet it must be owned, if there were not another life after this, and divine consolations to support us in the prospect of it, so many are the sorrows and troubles of this that we might sometimes be tempted to say that we were made in vain (Psa 89:47), and to wish we had never been. There are those in hell who with good reason wish they had never been born, as Judas, Mat 26:24. But, on this side hell, there can be no reason for so vain and ungrateful a wish. It was Job's folly and weakness to curse his day. We must say of it, This was his infirmity; but good men have sometimes failed in the exercise of those graces which they have been most eminent for, that we may understand that when they are said to be perfect it is meant that they were upright, not that they were sinless. Lastly, Let us observe it, to the honour of the spiritual life above the natural, that though many have cursed the day of their first birth, never any cursed the day of their new-birth, nor wished they never had had grace, and the Spirit of grace, given them. Those are the most excellent gifts, above life and being itself, and which will never be a burden.

II. Yet it was not so bad as Satan promised himself. Job cursed his day, but he did not curse his God - was weary of his life, and would gladly have parted with that, but not weary of his religion; he resolutely cleaves to that, and will never let it go. The dispute between God and Satan concerning Job was not whether Job had his infirmities, and whether he was subject to like passions as we are (that was granted), but whether he was a hypocrite, who secretly hated God, and if he were provoked, would show his hatred; and, upon trial, it proved that he was no such man. Nay, all this may consist with his being a pattern of patience; for, though he did thus speak unadvisedly with his lips, yet both before and after he expressed great submission and resignation to the holy will of God and repented of his impatience; he condemned himself for it, and therefore God did not condemn him, nor must we, but watch the more carefully over ourselves, lest we sin after the similitude of this transgression.

1. The particular expressions which Job used in cursing his day are full of poetical fancy, flame, and rapture, and create as much difficulty to the critics as the thing itself does to the divines: we need not be particular in our observations upon them. When he would express his passionate wish that he had never been, he falls foul upon the day, and wishes,

(1.) That earth might forget it: Let it perish (Job 3:3); let it not be joined to the days of the year, Job 3:6. "Let it be not only not inserted in the calendar in red letters, as the day of the king's nativity useth to be"(and Job was a king, Job 29:25), "but let it be erased and blotted out, and buried in oblivion. Let not the world know that ever such a man as I was born into it, and lived in it, who am made such a spectacle of misery."

(2.) That Heaven might frown upon it: Let not God regard it from above, Job 3:4. "Every thing is indeed as it is with God; that day is honourable on which he puts honour, and which he distinguishes and crowns with his favour and blessing, as he did the seventh day of the week; but let my birthday never be so honoured; let it be nigro carbone notandus - marked as with a black coal for an evil day by him that determines the times before appointed. The father and fountain of light appointed the greater light to rule the day and the less lights to rule the night; but let that want the benefit of both."[1.] Let that day be darkness (Job 3:4); and, if the light of the day be darkness, how great is that darkness! how terrible! because then we look for light. Let the gloominess of the day represent Job's condition, whose sun went down at noon. [2.] As for that night too, let it want the benefit of moon and stars, and let darkness seize upon it, thick darkness, darkness that may be felt, which will not befriend the repose of the night by its silence, but rather disturb it with its terrors.

(3.) That all joy might forsake it: "Let it be a melancholy night, solitary, and not a merry night of music and dancing. Let no joyful voice come therein (Job 3:7); let it be a long night, and not see the eye-lids of the morning (Job 3:9), which bring joy with them."

(4.) That all curses might follow it (Job 3:8): "Let none ever desire to see it, or bid it welcome when it comes, but, on the contrary, let those curse it that curse the day. Whatever day any are tempted to curse, let them at the same time bestow one curse upon my birthday, particularly those that make it their trade to raise up mourning at funerals with their ditties of lamentation. Let those that curse the day of the death of others in the same breath curse the day of my birth."Or those who are so fierce and daring as to be ready to raise up the Leviathan (for that is the word here), who, being about to strike the whale or crocodile, curse it with the bitterest curse they can invent, hoping by their incantations to weaken it, and so to make themselves master of it. Probably some such custom might there be used, to which our divine poet alludes. "Let it be as odious as the day wherein men bewail the greatest misfortune, or the time wherein they see the most dreadful apparition; "so bishop Patrick, I suppose taking the Leviathan here to signify the devil, as others do, who understand it of the curses used by conjurors and magicians in raising the devil, or when they have raised a devil that they cannot lay.

2. But what is the ground of Job's quarrel with the day and night of his birth? It is because it shut not up the doors of his mother's womb, Job 3:10. See the folly and madness of a passionate discontent, and how absurdly and extravagantly it talks when the reins are laid on the neck of it. Is this Job, who was so much admired for his wisdom that unto him men gave ear, and kept silence at his counsel, and after his words they spoke not again? Job 29:21, Job 29:11. Surely his wisdom failed him, (1.) When he took so much pains to express his desire that he had never been born, which, at the best was a vain wish, for it is impossible to make that which has been not to have been. (2.) When he was so liberal of his curses upon a day and a night that could not be hurt, or made any the worse for his curses. (3.) When he wished a thing so very barbarous to his own mother as that she had not brought him forth when her full time had come, which must inevitably have been her death, and a miserable death. (4.) When he despised the goodness of God to him in giving him a being (such a being, so noble and excellent a life, such a life, so far above that of any other creature in this lower world), and undervalued the gift, as not worth the acceptance, only because transit cum onere - it was clogged with a proviso of trouble, which now at length came upon him, after many years' enjoyment of its pleasures. What a foolish thing it was to wish that his eyes had never seen the light, that so they might not have seen sorrow, which yet he might hope to see through, and beyond which he might see joy! Did Job believe and hope that he should in his flesh see God at the latter day (Job 19:26), and yet would he wish he had never had a being capable of such a bliss, only because, for the present, he had sorrow in the flesh? God by his grace arm us against this foolish and hurtful lust of impatience.

Matthew Henry: Job 3:11-19

Job, perhaps reflecting upon himself for his folly in wishing he had never been born, follows it, and thinks to mend it, with another, little better, that he had died as soon as he was born, which he enlarges upon in these verses. When our Saviour would set forth a very calamitous state of things he seems to allow such a saying as this, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the paps which never gave suck (Luk 23:29); but blessing the barren womb is one thing and cursing the fruitful womb is another! It is good to make the best of afflictions, but it is not good to make the worst of mercies. Our rule is, Bless, and curse not. Life is often put for all good, and death for all evil; yet Job here very absurdly complains of life and its supports as a curse and plague to him, and covets death and the grave as the greatest and most desirable bliss. Surely Satan was deceived in Job when he applied that maxim to him, All that a man hath will he give for his life; for never any man valued life at a lower rate than he did.

I. He ungratefully quarrels with life, and is angry that it was not taken from him as soon as it was given him (Job 3:11, Job 3:12): Why died not I from the womb? See here, 1. What a weak and helpless creature man is when he comes into the world, and how slender the thread of life is when it is first drawn. We are ready to die from the womb, and to breathe our last as soon as we begin to breathe at all. We can do nothing for ourselves, as other creatures can, but should drop into the grave if the knees did not prevent us; and the lamp of life, when first lighted, would go out of itself if the breasts given us, that we should suck, did not supply it with fresh oil. 2. What a merciful and tender care divine Providence took of us at our entrance into the world. It was owing to this that we died not from the womb and did not give up the ghost when we came out of the belly. Why were we not cut off as soon as we were born? Not because we did not deserve it. Justly might such weeds have been plucked up as soon as they appeared; justly might such cockatrices have been crushed in the egg. Nor was it because we did, or could, take any care of ourselves and our own safety: no creature comes into the world so shiftless as man. It was not our might, or the power of our hand, that preserved us these beings, but God's power and providence upheld our frail lives, and his pity and patience spared our forfeited lives. It was owing to this that the knees prevented us. Natural affection is put into parents' hearts by the hand of the God of nature: and hence it was that the blessings of the breast attended those of the womb. 3. What a great deal of vanity and vexation of spirit attends human life. If we had not a God to serve in this world, and better things to hope for in another world, considering the faculties we are endued with and the troubles we are surrounded with, we should be strongly tempted to wish that we had died from the womb, which would have prevented a great deal both of sin and misery.

He that is born today, and dies tomorrow,

Loses some hours of joy, but months of sorrow.

4. The evil of impatience, fretfulness, and discontent. When they thus prevail they are unreasonable and absurd, impious and ungrateful. To indulge them is a slighting and undervaluing of God's favour. How much soever life is embittered, we must say, "It was of the Lord's mercies that we died not from the womb, that we were not consumed."Hatred of life is a contradiction to the common sense and sentiments of mankind, and to our own at any other time. Let discontented people declaim ever so much against life, they will be loth to part with it when it comes to the point. When the old man in the fable, being tired with his burden, threw it down with discontent and called for Death, and Death came to him and asked him what he would have with him, he then answered, "Nothing, but to help me up with my burden."

II. He passionately applauds death and the grave, and seems quite in love with them. To desire to die that we may be with Christ, that we may be free from sin, and that we may be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven, is the effect and evidence of grace; but to desire to die only that we may be quiet in the grave, and delivered from the troubles of this life, savours of corruption. Job's considerations here may be of good use to reconcile us to death when it comes, and to make us easy under the arrest of it; but they ought not to be made use of as a pretence to quarrel with life while it is continued, or to make us uneasy under the burdens of it. It is our wisdom and duty to make the best of that which is, be it living or dying, and so to live to the Lord and die to the Lord, and to be his in both, Rom 14:8. Job here frets himself with thinking that if he had but died as soon as he was born, and been carried from the womb to the grave, 1. His condition would have been as good as that of the best: I would have been (says he, Job 3:14) with kings and counsellors of the earth, whose pomp, power, and policy, cannot set them out of the reach of death, nor secure them from the grave, nor distinguish theirs from common dust in the grave. Even princes, who had gold in abundance, could not with it bribe Death to overlook them when he came with commission; and, though they filled their houses with silver, yet they were forced to leave it all behind them, no more to return to it. Some, by the desolate places which the kings and counsellors are here said to build for themselves, understand the sepulchres or monuments they prepared for themselves in their life-time; as Shebna (Isa 22:16) hewed himself out a sepulchre; and by the gold which the princes had, and the silver with which they filled their houses, they understand the treasures which, they say, it was usual to deposit in the graves of great men. Such arts have been used to preserve their dignity, if possible, on the other side death, and to keep themselves from lying even with those of inferior rank; but it will not do: death is, and will be, an irresistible leveller. Mors sceptra ligonibus aequat - Death mingles sceptres with spades. Rich and poor meet together in the grave; and there a hidden untimely birth (Job 3:16), a child that either never saw light or but just opened its eyes and peeped into the world, and, not liking it, closed them again and hastened out of it, lies as soft and easy, lies as high and safe, as kings and counsellors, and princes, that had gold. "And therefore,"says Job, "would I had lain there in the dust, rather than to lie here in the ashes!"2. His condition would have been much better than now it was (Job 3:13): " Then should I have lain still, and been quiet, which now I cannot do, I cannot be, but am still tossing and unquiet; then I should have slept, whereas now sleep departeth from my eyes; then had I been at rest, whereas now I am restless."Now that life and immortality are brought to a much clearer light by the gospel than before they were placed in good Christians can give a better account than this of the gain of death: "Then should I have been present with the Lord; then should I have seen his glory face to face, and no longer through a glass darkly."But all that poor Job dreamed of was rest and quietness in the grave out of the fear of evil tidings and out of the feeling of sore boils. Then should I have been quiet; and had he kept his temper, his even easy temper still, which he was in as recorded in the two foregoing chapters, entirely resigned to the holy will of God and acquiescing in it, he might have been quiet now; his soul, at least, might have dwelt at ease, even when his body lay in pain, Psa 25:13. Observe how finely he describes the repose of the grave, which (provided the soul also be at rest in God) may much assist our triumphs over it. (1.) Those that now are troubled will there be out of the reach of trouble (Job 3:17): There the wicked cease from troubling. When persecutors die they can no longer persecute; their hatred and envy will then perish. Herod had vexed the church, but, when he became a prey for worms, he ceased from troubling. When the persecuted die they are out of the danger of being any further troubled. Had Job been at rest in his grave, he would have had no disturbance from the Sabeans and Chaldeans, none of all his enemies would have created him any trouble. (2.) Those that are now toiled will there see the period of their toils. There the weary are at rest. Heaven is more than a rest to the souls of the saints, but the grave is a rest to their bodies. Their pilgrimage is a weary pilgrimage; sin and the world they are weary of; their services, sufferings, and expectations, they are wearied with; but in the grave they rest from all their labours, Rev 14:13; Isa 57:2. They are easy there, and make no complaints; there believers sleep in Jesus. (3.) Those that were here enslaved are there at liberty. Death is the prisoner's discharge, the relief of the oppressed, and the servant's manumission (Job 3:18): There the prisoners, though they walk not at large, yet they rest together, and are not put to work, to grind in that prison-house. They are no more insulted and trampled upon, menaced and terrified, by their cruel task-masters: They hear not the voice of the oppressor. Those that were here doomed to perpetual servitude, that could call nothing their own, no, not their own bodies, are there no longer under command or control: There the servant is free from his master, which is a good reason why those that have power should use it moderately, and those that are in subjection should bear it patiently, yet a little while. (4.) Those that were at a vast distance from others are there upon a level (Job 3:19): The small and great are there, there the same, there all one, all alike free among the dead. The tedious pomp and state which attend the great are at an end there. All the inconveniences of a poor and low condition are likewise over; death and the grave know no difference.

Levelled by death, the conqueror and the slave,

The wise and foolish, cowards and the brave,

Lie mixed and undistinguished in the grave.

- Sir R. Blackmore

Keil-Delitzsch: Job 3:1-2

Job's first longer utterance now commences, by which he involved himself in the conflict, which is his seventh temptation or trial.

1, 2 After this Job opened his mouth, and cursed his day. And Job spake, and said.

Job 3:2

Job 3:2 consists only of three words, which are separated by Rebia ; and ויאמר , although Milel , is vocalized ויּאמר , because the usual form ויּאמר , which always immediately precedes direct narration, is not well suited to close the verse. ענה , signifies to begin to speak from some previous incitement, as the New Testament ἀποκρ̀¹́νεσθαι (not always = השׁיב ) is also sometimes used.

(Note: Vid., on this use of ἀποκρίνεσθαι , Quaestio xxi. of the Amphilochia of Photius in Ang. Maji Collectio , i. 229f.)

The following utterance of Job, with which the poetic accentuation begins, is analysed by modern critics as follows: Job 3:3-10, Job 3:11-19, Job 3:20-26. Schlottmann calls it three strophes, Hahn three parts, in the first of which delirious cursing of life is expressed; in the second, eager longing for death; in the third, reproachful inquiry after the end of such a life of suffering. In reality they are not strophes. Nevertheless Ebrard is wrong when he maintains that, in general, strophe-structure is as little to be found in the book of Job as in Wallenstein's Monologue . The poetical part of the book of Job is throughout strophic, so far as the nature of the drama admits it. So also even this first speech. Stickel has correctly traced out its divisions; but accidentally, for he has reckoned according to the Masoretic verses. That this is false, he is now fully aware; also Ewald, in his Essay on Strophes in the Book of Job, is almost misled into this groundless reckoning of the strophes according to the Masoretic verses ( Jahrb . iii. X. 118, Anm. 3). The strophe-schema of the following speech is as follows: 8. 10. 6. 8. 6. 8. 6. The translation will show how unmistakeably it may be known. In the translation we have followed the complete lines of the original, and their rhythm: the iambic pentameter into which Ebrard, and still earlier Hosse (1849), have translated, disguises the oriental Hebrew poetry of the book with its variegated richness of form in a western uniform, the monotonous impression of which is not, as elsewhere, counter-balanced in the book of Job by the change of external action. After the translation we give the grammatical explanation of each strophe; and at the conclusion of the speech thus translated and explained, its higher exposition, i.e., its artistic importance in the connection of the drama, and its theological importance in relation to the Old and New Testament religion and religious life.

Keil-Delitzsch: Job 3:3-5

3 Perish the day wherein I was born.

And the night which said, A man-child is conceived!

4 Let that day become darkness;

Let not Eloah ask after it from above,

And let not the light shine on it.

5 May darkness and the shadow of death purchase it back;

Let a cloud lie upon it;

May that which obscures the day terrify it.

The curse is against the day of his birth and the night of his conception as recurring yearly, not against the actual first day (Schlottm.), to which the imprecations which follow are not pertinent. Job wishes his birth-day may become dies ater, swallowed up by darkness as into nothing. The elliptical relative clauses, Job 3:3 (Ges. §123, 3; cf. 127, 4, c ), become clear from the translation. Transl. the night ( לילה with parag. He is masc .) which said, not: in which they said; the night alone was witness of this beginning of the development of a man-child, and made report of it to the High One, to whom it is subordinate. Day emerges from the darkness as Eloah from above (as Job 31:2, Job 31:28), i.e., He who reigns over the changes here below, asks after it; interests Himself in His own ( דּרשׁ ). Job wishes his birth-day may not rejoice in this. The relations of this his birth-day are darkness and the shadow of death. These are to redeem it, as, according to the right of kinsmen, family property is redeemed when it has got into a stranger's hands. This is the meaning of גּאל (lxx ἐκλάβοι ), not = גּעל , inquinent (Targ.). עננה is collective, as נהרה , mass of cloud. Instead of כּמרירי (the Caph of which seems pointed as praepos ), we must read with Ewald (§157, a ), Olshausen, (§187, b ), and others, כּמרירי , after the form חכליל , darkness, dark flashing (vid., on Psa 10:8), שׁפריר , tapestry, unless we are willing to accept a form of noun without example elsewhere. The word signifies an obscuring, from כּמר , to glow with heat, because the greater the glow the deeper the blackness it leaves behind. All that ever obscures a day is to overtake and render terrible that day.

(Note: We may compare here, and further, on, Constance's outburst of despair in King John (3:1 and 3:4). Shakespeare, like Goethe, enriches himself from the book of Job.)

Keil-Delitzsch: Job 3:6-9

6 That night! let darkness seize upon it;

Let it not rejoice among the days of the year;

Let it not come into the number of the month.

7 Lo! let that night become barren;

Let no sound of gladness come to it.

8 Let those who curse the day curse it,

Who are skilled in stirring up leviathan.

9 Let the stars of its early twilight be darkened;

Let it long for light and there be none;

And let it not refresh itself with eyelids of the dawn.

Darkness is so to seize it, and so completely swallow it up, that it shall not be possible for it to pass into the light of day. It is not to become a day, to be reckoned as belonging to the days of the year and rejoice in the light thereof. יחדּ , for יחדּ , fut. Kal from חדה ( Exo 18:9), with Dagesh lene retained, and a helping Pathach (vid., Ges. §75, rem. 3, d ); the reverse of the passage Gen 49:6, where יחד , from יחד , uniat se , is found. It is to become barren, גּלמוּד , so that no human being shall ever be conceived and born, and greeted joyfully in it.

(Note: Fries understands רננה , song of the spheres ( concentum coeli , Job 38:37, Vulg.); but this Hellenic conception is without support in holy Scripture.)

"Those who curse days"are magicians who know how to change days into dies infausti by their incantations. According to vulgar superstition, from which the imagery of Job 3:8 is borrowed, there was a special art of exciting the dragon, which is the enemy of sun and moon, against them both, so that, by its devouring them, total darkness prevails. The dragon is called in Hindu râhu ; the Chinese, and also the natives of Algeria, even at the present day make a wild tumult with drums and copper vessels when an eclipse of the sun or moon occurs, until the dragon will release his prey.

(Note: On the dragon râhu , that swallows up sun and moon, vid., Pott, in the Hallische Lit. Zeitschr. 1849, No. 199; on the custom of the Chinese, Käuffer, Das chinesische Volk , S. 123. A similar custom among the natives of Algeria I have read of in a newspaper (1856). Moreover, the clouds which conceal the sky the Indians represent as a serpent. It is ahi , the cloud-serpent, which Indra chases away when he divides the clouds with his lightning. Vid., Westergaard in Weber's Indischer Zeitschr . 1855, S. 417.)

Job wishes that this monster may swallow up the sun of his birth-day. If the night in which he was conceived or born is to become day, then let the stars of its twilight (i.e., the stars which, as messengers of the morning, twinkle through the twilight of dawn) become dark. It is to remain for ever dark, never behold with delight the eyelids of the dawn. בּ ראה , to regale one's self with the sight of anything, refresh one's self. When the first rays of morning shoot up in the eastern sky, then the dawn raises its eyelids; they are in Sophocles's Antigone , 103, χρυσέης ἡμέρας βλέφαρον , the eyelid of the golden day, and therefore of the sun, the great eye.

Keil-Delitzsch: Job 3:10-12

10 Because it did not close the doors of my mother's womb,

Nor hid sorrow from my eyes.

11 Why did I not die from the womb,

Come forth from the womb and expire?

12 Why have the knees welcomed me?

And why the breasts, that I should suck?

The whole strophe contains strong reason for his cursing the night of his conception or birth. It should rather have closed (i.e., make the womb barren, to be explained according to 1Sa 1:5; Gen 16:2) the doors of his womb (i.e., the womb that conceived concepit him), and so have withdrawn the sorrow he now experiences from his unborn eyes (on the extended force of the negative, vid., Ges. §152, 3). Then why, i.e., to what purpose worth the labour, is he then conceived and born? The four questions, Job 3:11., form a climax: he follows the course of his life from its commencement in embryo ( מרהם , to be explained according to Jer 20:17, and Job 10:18, where, however, it is מן local, not as here, temporal) to the birth, and from the joy of his father who took the new-born child upon his knees (comp. Gen 50:23) to the first development of the infant, and he curses this growing life in its four phases (Arnh., Schlottm.). Observe the consecutio temp . The fut. אמוּת has the signification moriebar , because taken from the thought of the first period of his conception and birth; so also ואגוע , governed by the preceding perf., the signification et exspirabam (Ges. §127, 4, c ). Just so אינק , but modal, ut sugerem ea .

Keil-Delitzsch: Job 3:13-16

13 So should I now have lain and had quiet,

I should have slept, then it would have been well with me,

14 With kings and councillors of the earth,

Who built ruins for themselves,

15 Or with princes possessing gold,

Who filled their houses with silver:

16 Or like a hidden untimely birth I had not been,

And as children that have never seen the light.

The perf . and interchanging fut . have the signification of oriental imperfecta conjunctivi , according to Ges. §126, 5; עתּה כּי is the usual expression after hypothetical clauses, and takes the perf . if the preceding clause specifies a condition which has not occurred in the past (Gen 31:42; Gen 43:10; Num 22:29, Num 22:33; 1Sa 14:30), the fut . if a condition is not existing in the present (Job 6:3; Job 8:6; Job 13:19). It is not to be translated: for then; כי rather commences the clause following: so I should now, indeed then I should. Ruins, הרבות , are uninhabited desolate buildings, elsewhere such as have become, here such as are from the first intended to remain, uninhabited and desolate, consequently sepulchres, mausoleums; probably, since the book has Egyptian allusions, in other passages also, a play upon the pyramids, in whose name (III-XPAM, according to Coptic glossaries) III is the Egyptian article (vid., Bunsen, Aeg . ii. 361); Arab. without the art. hirâm or ahrâm (vid., Abdollatîf, ed. de Sacy, p. 293, s.).

(Note: We think that חרבות sounds rather like חרמות , the name of the pyramids, as the Arabic haram (instead of hharam ), derived from XPAM, recalls harmân (e.g., beith harmân , a house in ruins), the synonym of hhardân ( חרב֡ן ).)

Also Renan: Qui se bâtissent des mausolées . Böttch. de inferis , §298 (who, however, prefers to read רחבות , wide streets), rightly directs attention to the difference between החרבות בנה (to rebuild the ruins) and לו בנה ח (to build ruins for one's self). With או like things are then ranged after one another. Builders of the pyramids, millionaires, abortions (vid., Ecc 6:3), and the still-born: all these are removed from the sufferings of this life in their quiet of the grave, be their grave a "ruin"gazed upon by their descendants, or a hole dug out in the earth, and again filled in as it was before.

Keil-Delitzsch: Job 3:17-19

17 There the wicked cease from troubling,

And the weary are at rest.

18 The captives dwell together in tranquillity;

They hear not the voice of the taskmaster.

19 The small and great, - they are alike there;

And the servant is free from his lord.

There, i.e., in the grave, all enjoy the rest they could not find here: the troublers and the troubled ones alike. רגן corresponds to the radical idea of looseness, broken in pieces, want of restraint, therefore of Turba (comp. Isa 57:20; Jer 6:7), contained etymologically in רשׁע . The Pilel שׁאנן vid., Ges. §55, 2) signifies perfect freedom from care. In הוּא שׁם , הוּא is more than the sign of the copula (Hirz., Hahn, Schlottm.); the rendering of the lxx, Vulg., and Luther., ibi sunt , is too feeble. As it is said of God, Isa 41:4; Isa 43:13; Psa 102:28, that He is הוּא , i.e., He who is always the same, ὁ αὐτός ; so here, הוּא , used purposely instead of המּה , signifies that great and small are like one another in the grave: all distinction has ceased, it has sunk to the equality of their present lot. Correctly Ewald: Great and small are there the same. יחד , Job 3:18, refers to this destiny which brings them together.

Constable: Job 3:1-26

A. Job's Personal Lament ch. 3

The poetic body to the book begins with a soliloquy in which Job cursed the day of his birth. This introductory soliloquy corresponds to another one Job gave at the end of his dialogue with his three friends (chs. 29-31), especially chapter 31 in which he uttered another curse against himself. These two soliloquies bracket the three cycles of speeches and bind them together into a unified whole.

Evidently the passing of time brought Job no relief but only continued the irritation of his persisting pain. In chapter 2 Job restrained his words and manifested a submissive attitude. In chapter 3 his statements are assertive and angry. In this section Job articulated a death wish. He really expressed three wishes.

Constable: Job 3:1-10

1. The wish that he had not been born 3:1-10

Job evidently considered his conception as the beginning of his existence (v. 3). His poetic description of his birth sets forth his regret that he had left his mother's womb alive.

"Leviathan [3:8] was a seven-headed sea monster of ancient Near Eastern mythology. In the Ugaritic literature of Canaan and Phoenicia, eclipses were said to be caused by Leviathan's swallowing the sun and moon. Job said, Let thou curse it [the night of my conception] who curse the day, who are prepared to arouse Leviathan.' He was referring to a custom of sorcerers or enchanters, who claimed to have the power to make a day unfortunate by rousing the dragon asleep in the sea and inciting it to swallow the sun or moon. Thus, if the daytime or nighttime luminary were gone, Job's birthday would, in a sense, be missing. Was Job indicating belief in a creature of mythology? No, he was probably doing nothing more than utilizing for poetic purposes a common notion that his hearers would understand. This would have been similar to modern adults' referring to Santa Claus. Mentioning his name does not mean that one believes such a person exists."³¹

Job wanted to express in many ways his regret that he had been born. Evidently the reason Job longed for nonexistence was his failure to understand his relationship to God or his place in the universe. Job had many questions about the creation order. He seems to have realized that understanding his relationship to God and his place in creation required an understanding of creation. In clarifying Job's relationships Elihu and God also said much about creation. This appears to be the reason the creation motif is so prevalent in the Book of Job.³² An understanding of creation is indeed essential to our correct understanding of who we are and what our relationship to God is (Gen. 1-2).³³

Constable: Job 3:11-19

2. The wish that he had died at birth 3:11-19

Another acceptable alternative to Job was that he had been stillborn, miscarried, or died immediately after birth. All the past joys in his life could not compensate for the present misery he felt. The rest of death was better than the turmoil of life for him.

Guzik: Job 3:1-26

Job 3 - Job Curses the Day of His Birth

A. Wishes he had never been born.

1. (1-2) Job will curse his birth day, but not his God.

After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. And Job spoke, and said:

a. After this: This was after all the catastrophe, all the personal affliction, and all the demonstration of compassion from Job's friends. Now Job will begin to speak about his situation.

b. Cursed the day of his birth: Satan was confident that he could push Job to curse God (Job 1:11 and 2:5). As Job spoke in his deep distress, he cursed the day of his birth - but he did not even come close to cursing God.

i. Job's thinking was somewhat common among the ancients. The historian Herodotus described an ancient people who mourned new births (for the suffering that the new life would endure) and rejoiced in deaths (as a final release from the suffering of life).

ii. This chapter begins the battle in Job's mind and soul. He will not lose more or suffer more than he already has (though his physical pain will continue). Yet now we can say that the battle enters into an entirely other arena; the arena of Job's mind and soul. How will he choose to think about his suffering? How will he choose to think about what others think about his suffering? How will he choose to think about God in all this? These are the questions that take up the remainder of the book, and soon come to any sufferer. The catastrophic loss itself is only an entry point into the agonizing battle in the mind and soul.

2. (3-10) Job curses the day of his birth.

"May the day perish on which I was born,

And the night in which it was said,

'A male child is conceived.'

May that day be darkness;

May God above not seek it,

Nor the light shine upon it.

May darkness and the shadow of death claim it;

May a cloud settle on it;

May the blackness of the day terrify it.

As for that night, may darkness seize it;

May it not rejoice among the days of the year,

May it not come into the number of the months.

Oh, may that night be barren!

May no joyful shout come into it!

May those curse it who curse the day,

Those who are ready to arouse Leviathan.

May the stars of its morning be dark;

May it look for light, but have none,

And not see the dawning of the day;

Because it did not shut up the doors of my mother's womb,

Nor hide sorrow from my eyes.

a. May the day perish on which I was born: Here, in fine Hebrew poetic style, Job cursed the day of his birth. Yet if there were not enough, he goes even further back and curses the night of his conception. Job's complaint is that it would be better if he were never born than to endure his present catastrophe of affliction.

i. This begins a section that somewhat like a dialogue between Job and his friends. Sometimes a speaker in this dialogue answers what the previous speaker said; sometimes they do not. Sometimes the speeches are emotional much more than logical. When Job speaks, he often speaks to God; his friends speak much about God but never to Him.

ii. Beginning with Job 3:3, the style of speaking (and writing) is poetic. This means that we must allow for figures of speech and exaggeration of feeling in those who speak. "So when Job calls God his enemy, the reader must remember these are words of poetic passion used analogically as the total context proves." (Smick)

b. May that day be darkness: Job here is despising the day of his birth, and wishing that this day could be wiped off the calendar of history. Job does not curse God here or anywhere else in the Book of Job; but he here makes his strongest statements against God and especially against the wisdom and plan of God.

i. "As God had said in Genesis 1:3, 'Let there be light,' so Job, using the same terminology in Job 3:4, said, 'As for that day, let there be darkness' (literal translation). All this is a logical absurdity, but it is poetry, and Job meant to give full vent to his feelings." (Smick)

ii. We can say that he cursed his day, but not his God, as the devil wanted him to do. "Giving the reins wholly to his grief, he roareth and rageth beyond all reason; and had not the Spirit held him back, he would surely have run headlong into blasphemy and desperation, which was Satan's design." (Trapp)

c. May those curse it who curse the day: Without endorsing the practices of ancient sorcerers, Job calls upon them (those who curse) to also pronounce this curse upon the day he was born.

i. "Job summons the ancient soothsayers to curse his birthday. I don't believe Job personally believed in their mystical power, not was he committing himself to them. Rather, he is simply communicating vividly." (Lawson)

d. Those who are ready to arouse Leviathan: This is the first mention of this strange creature in the Bible, but Leviathan is mentioned prominently in a long discourse beginning at Job 41:1. Usually Leviathan is considered to be a mythical sea-monster or dragon that terrorized sailors and fishermen.

i. In Job's present context, the idea may be that even as sailors and fishermen would curse the threatening Leviathan with all their might, so Job wishes the day of his birth would also be cursed. "Not as if Job did justify this practice, but only it is a rash and passionate wish, that they who pour forth so many curses undeservedly, would bestow their deserved curse upon this day." (Poole)

ii. "Current mythology used the term Leviathan for a monster of chaos who lived in the sea, and the Sea itself was a boisterous deity who could be aroused professionally. But to Job, a strict monotheist, this was simply vivid imagery." (Smick)

iii. "There can be no doubt that the Leviathan is the chaos dragon of the ancient myths." (Andersen)

iv. The name Leviathan means "twisting one" and is also used in other interesting places in Scripture.

· Psalm 74:12-14 refers to Leviathan as a sea serpent, and that God broke the head of the Leviathan long ago, perhaps at the creation.

· Psalm 104:26 also refers to Leviathan as a sea creature.

· Isaiah 27:1 speaks of the future defeat of Leviathan, also associating it with a twisted serpent that lives in the sea.

· Isaiah 51:9 and Psalm 89-8-10 also speak of a serpent associated with the sea that God defeated as a demonstration of His great strength, and identifies this serpent with the name Rahab, meaning proud one.

· Job 26:12-13 also refers to God's piercing defeat of a fleeing serpent associated with the sea.

v. Ancient rabbinic mythologies suggest that an evil serpent was in the primeval sea resisting creation, and that God killed the serpent and brought order to the world (Genesis 1:1-2).

vi. Satan is often represented as a dragon or a serpent (Genesis 3; Revelation 12 and 13) and the sea is thought of as a dangerous or threatening place in the Jewish mind (Isaiah 57:20; Mark 4:39; Revelation 21:1). Therefore, Leviathan may be another serpent-like manifestation of Satan, who was the original "Rahab" (proud one).

vii. The Puritan commentator John Trapp avoided the discussion of Leviathan altogether. "If I should go about to show the reader, with the several opinions of interpreters, I should not only tire him out, but also danger doing as that vicar of Augsburgh did . . . at the end of his last lecture said, that both Job and himself were very glad to be rid of one another; for as he understood little or nothing of Job's meaning, so Job seemed to him to be more tormented with his enarrations [exposition] than ever he had been with all his own ulcers."

B. Job longs for the grave as a release from his present misery.

1. (11-19) Why did I not die at birth?

"Why did I not die at birth?

Why did I not perish when I came from the womb?

Why did the knees receive me?

Or why the breasts, that I should nurse?

For now I would have lain still and been quiet,

I would have been asleep;

Then I would have been at rest

With kings and counselors of the earth,

Who built ruins for themselves,

Or with princes who had gold,

Who filled their houses with silver;

Or why was I not hidden like a stillborn child,

Like infants who never saw light?

There the wicked cease from troubling,

And there the weary are at rest.

There the prisoners rest together;

They do not hear the voice of the oppressor.

The small and great are there,

And the servant is free from his master.

a. Why did I not perish when I came from the womb? Job continued his complaint from his place of misery. Using poetic exaggeration, Job powerfully communicated his present pain and the feeling that it would be much better if he had never survived to face such catastrophe.

i. It is as if Job said at this point, "I have asked that the day of my birth be obliterated, and that has not and can not happen. So why could I have not been a stillbirth?"

ii. It is easy - but very, very wrong - to think that Job was a sinner because he was so emotional. But the Bible does not present to us a stoic, unfeeling, "stiff upper lip" approach to the problems of life. "It cannot be emphasized too strongly that the startling sentiments expressed in this speech do not mean that Job has cracked under the strain. There is no hint that Satan has finally made his point. . . . The Lord's testing is not to find out if Job can sit unmoved like a piece of wood." (Andersen)

b. For now I would have lain still and been quiet, I would have been asleep: Job was wrong in his understanding of the afterlife, perhaps believing in something similar to the modern doctrine of soul sleep, which says that the dead lie in the grave in some sort of suspended state until they are resurrected on the final day.

i. The idea of soul sleep is wrong because of what Paul clearly wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:6-8 - that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Paul understood that if he was not alive on this earth, he would be in the presence of God and not in a suspended state lying in a grave. Paul also understood that if he died it would be an immediate gain (Philippians 1:21), which also argues against the idea of soul sleep.

ii. We can explain Job's lack of knowledge of the afterlife by understanding the principle of 2 Timothy 2:10: that Jesus Christ brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. The understanding of immortality was at best cloudy in the Old Testament, but is much clearer in the New Testament. For example, we can say that Jesus knew fully what He was talking about when He described hell and judgment (such as in Matthew 25:41-46). We therefore rely on the New Testament for our understanding of the afterlife, much more than the Old.

iii. We also understand that this does not in any way take away from the truth of the Bible and the Book of Job. What is true is that Job actually said this and actually believed it; the truth of the statement itself must be evaluated according to the rest of the Bible.

iv. Later, God challenged and corrected Job's presumptuous assertions regarding the afterlife, reminding Job that he did not in fact know that life after death was like (Job 38:2 and 38:17).

c. There the wicked cease from troubling: Job was also wrong in this view of the afterlife. He had the feeling that many people have - that the world beyond this is somehow a better place for everyone. In fact, the wicked do not cease from troubling in the world beyond; their trouble only increases. The prisoners do not rest, and perhaps the only voice they hear is that of their oppressor.

i. "It implies that the wicked live in a state of emotional disturbance which happily ends for them in death. We are already near the bitter thought that being good or bad makes no difference in the end." (Andersen)

ii. This deception is remarkably widespread. One notable example involves the infamous Columbine murderers, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who left behind a videotaped document spelling out their motivation. In the last segment of tape, shot the morning of the murders, Harris and Klebold are dressed and say they are ready for "our little Judgment Day." Then Klebold, looking tense, says goodbye to his parents. He concluded, "I didn't like life too much. Just know I am going to a better place than here." Incredibly, these young men believed they were going to a better place.

iii. Yet, we understand that Job was not aiming for theological certainty or to explain the afterlife. He poured out the agony of his soul. "Job meddles not here with their eternal state after death, or the sentence and judgment of God against wicked men, of which he speaks hereafter; but only speaks of their freedom from worldly troubles, which is the only matter of his complaint and present discourse." (Poole)

2. (20-26) Job laments his state: why go on living?

"Why is light given to him who is in misery,

And life to the bitter of soul,

Who long for death, but it does not come,

And search for it more than hidden treasures;

Who rejoice exceedingly,

And are glad when they can find the grave?

Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden,

And whom God has hedged in?

For my sighing comes before I eat,

And my groanings pour out like water.

For the thing I greatly feared has come upon me,

And what I dreaded has happened to me.

I am not at ease, nor am I quiet;

I have no rest, for trouble comes."

a. Why is light given to him who is in misery? Job wondered why God allowed those in misery such as his to go on living, and why life was given to those who were so bitter of soul. It is a moving, poetic expansion of the idea expressed in the previous passage, speculating that death was better than his present misery.

i. Job was among those who long for death, but it does not come. Yet, he did not commit or seem to seriously consider suicide. Again, this the outpouring of a honest, agonizing soul.

ii. "But it is observable that Job durst not lay violent hands upon himself, nor do any thing to hasten or procure his death; notwithstanding all his miseries and complaints, he was contented to wait all the days of his appointed time, till his change came, Job 14:14." (Poole)

b. Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden, and whom God has hedged in? Job's trouble does not come because he has lost faith in God. He feels and fears that God has lost faith in him. He asks, "Why continue living (why is light given) if I can't see the way and God has trapped me in this place?

i. "His concern from beginning to end is God; not his wealth or his health, but his life with God. It is because he seems to have lost God that he is in such torment." (Andersen)

ii. "As Satan invaded Job's life and brought great harm, God had built another hedge around Job's life. But this hedge is to keep Job from escaping his trials. He is now locked in. Instead of a wall of protection to keep Satan out, now there is a wall of affliction that keeps Job in." (Lawson)

iii. "The words are even more bitter, for there is an ironical echo of what the Satan had said in 1:10. The Satan saw God's hedge as a protection; Job finds it a restriction. He feels trapped." (Andersen)

iv. The man here described can see no reason for the trouble he is in; his way is hidden. Yet there was actually a wonderful answer to Job's question, if he could only see it.

· God allowed Job to continue on in life to teach a lesson to angelic beings.

· God allowed Job to continue on in life to teach him special reliance upon God.

· God allowed Job to continue on in life to teach him to not regard the wisdom of man so much.

· God allowed Job to continue on in life to vindicate him before other men.

· God allowed Job to continue on in life to make him a lesson and an example for all ages.

· God allowed Job to continue on in life to give him more than he ever had before.

c. For my signing comes before I eat, and my groanings pour out like water: We sense the great emotion in Job's speech. He was not a stoic or concerned with keeping what is known as a "stiff upper lip" in the midst of all his calamity. Such an emotionless Christian life is never presented to us a Biblical ideal.

d. For the thing that I greatly feared has come upon me: Job reminds us that before this disaster came to his life, he did not live a happy-go-lucky care-free life. He was concerned that trouble might come to him or to his family, so he took precautions before God to prevent it (Job 1:5).

i. "Whereas it might be said unto him, Is it fit for thee, who hast hitherto been so happy, now to take on so heavily, because thus and thus afflicted? Truly, saith he, I was never so happy as you took me for; because (considering how movable and mutable all outward things are) I always feared lest I should outlive my prosperity; that which now also is unhappily befallen me." (Trapp)

ii. "While I was in prosperity I thought adversity might come, and I had a dread of it. I feared the loss of my family and my property; and both have occurred. I was not lifted up: I knew that what I possessed I had from divine Providence, and that he who gave might take away. I am not stripped of my all as a punishment for my self-confidence." (Clarke)

e. I am not at ease, nor am I quiet; I have no rest, for trouble comes: With these final four blows of the hammer, Job ends his first speech. Through it all he shows us that even a great man of faith can fall into great depression and despair.

i. The great preacher of Victorian England, Charles Spurgeon, describe just such a season in his own life: "I was lying upon my couch during this last week, and my spirits were sunken so low that I could weep by the hour like a child, and yet I knew not what I wept for - but a very slight thing will move me to tears just now - and a kind friend was telling me of some poor old soul living near, who was suffering very great pain, and yet she was full of joy and rejoicing. I was so distressed by the hearing of that story, and felt so ashamed of myself, that I did not know what to do; wondering why I should be in such a state as this; while this poor woman, who had a terrible cancer, and was in the most frightful agony, could nevertheless 'rejoice with joy unspeakable, and full of glory.' " (Charles Spurgeon, The Christian's Heaviness and Rejoicing)

ii. "Where in the world will you find a sadder strain of more hopeless, uncontrolled, and unbroken lamentation and mourning?" (Bradley) Yet, "Such outpouring is a far more healthy thing for the soul than dark and silent brooding." (Morgan)

© 2006 David Guzik - No distribution beyond personal use without permission

Introduction / Outline

JFB: Job (Book Introduction)

JOB A REAL PERSON.--It has been supposed by some that the book of Job is an allegory, not a real narrative, on account of the artificial character of many of its statements. Thus the sacred numbers, three and seven, often occur. He had seven thousand sheep, seven sons, both before and after his trials; his three friends sit down with him seven days and seven nights; both before and after his trials he had three daughters. So also the number and form of the speeches of the several speakers seem to be artificial. The name of Job, too, is derived from an Arabic word signifying repentance.

But Eze 14:14 (compare Eze 14:16, Eze 14:20) speaks of "Job" in conjunction with "Noah and Daniel," real persons. St. James (Jam 5:11) also refers to Job as an example of "patience," which he would not have been likely to do had Job been only a fictitious person. Also the names of persons and places are specified with a particularity not to be looked for in an allegory. As to the exact doubling of his possessions after his restoration, no doubt the round number is given for the exact number, as the latter approached near the former; this is often done in undoubtedly historical books. As to the studied number and form of the speeches, it seems likely that the arguments were substantially those which appear in the book, but that the studied and poetic form was given by Job himself, guided by the Holy Spirit. He lived one hundred and forty years after his trials, and nothing would be more natural than that he should, at his leisure, mould into a perfect form the arguments used in the momentous debate, for the instruction of the Church in all ages. Probably, too, the debate itself occupied several sittings; and the number of speeches assigned to each was arranged by preconcerted agreement, and each was allowed the interval of a day or more to prepare carefully his speech and replies; this will account for the speakers bringing forward their arguments in regular series, no one speaking out of his turn. As to the name Job--repentance (supposing the derivation correct)--it was common in old times to give a name from circumstances which occurred at an advanced period of life, and this is no argument against the reality of the person.

WHERE JOB LIVED.--"Uz," according to GESENIUS, means a light, sandy soil, and was in the north of Arabia-Deserta, between Palestine and the Euphrates, called by PTOLEMY (Geography, 19) Ausitai or Aisitai. In Gen 10:23; Gen 22:21; Gen 36:28; and 1Ch 1:17, 1Ch 1:42, it is the name of a man. In Jer 25:20; Lam 4:21; and Job 1:1, it is a country. Uz, in Gen 22:21, is said to be the son of Nahor, brother of Abraham--a different person from the one mentioned (Gen 10:23), a grandson of Shem. The probability is that the country took its name from the latter of the two; for this one was the son of Aram, from whom the Arameans take their name, and these dwelt in Mesopotamia, between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris. Compare as to the dwelling of the sons of Shem in Gen 10:30, "a mount of the East," answering to "men of the East" (Job 1:3). RAWLINSON, in his deciphering of the Assyrian inscriptions, states that "Uz is the prevailing name of the country at the mouth of the Euphrates." It is probable that Eliphaz the Temanite and the Sabeans dwelt in that quarter; and we know that the Chaldeans resided there, and not near Idumea, which some identify with Uz. The tornado from "the wilderness" (Job 1:19) agrees with the view of it being Arabia-Deserta. Job (Job 1:3) is called "the greatest of the men of the East"; but Idumea was not east, but south of Palestine: therefore in Scripture language, the phrase cannot apply to that country, but probably refers to the north of Arabia-Deserta, between Palestine, Idumea, and the Euphrates. So the Arabs still show in the Houran a place called Uz as the residence of Job.

THE AGE WHEN JOB LIVED.--EUSEBIUS fixes it two ages before Moses, that is, about the time of Isaac: eighteen hundred years before Christ, and six hundred after the Deluge. Agreeing with this are the following considerations: 1. Job's length of life is patriarchal, two hundred years. 2. He alludes only to the earliest form of idolatry, namely, the worship of the sun, moon, and heavenly hosts (called Saba, whence arises the title "Lord of Sabaoth," as opposed to Sabeanism) (Job 31:26-28). 3. The number of oxen and rams sacrificed, seven, as in the case of Balaam. God would not have sanctioned this after the giving of the Mosaic law, though He might graciously accommodate Himself to existing customs before the law. 4. The language of Job is Hebrew, interspersed occasionally with Syriac and Arabic expressions, implying a time when all the Shemitic tribes spoke one common tongue and had not branched into different dialects, Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic. 5. He speaks of the most ancient kind of writing, namely, sculpture. Riches also are reckoned by cattle. The Hebrew word, translated "a piece of money," ought rather be rendered "a lamb." 6. There is no allusion to the exodus from Egypt and to the miracles that accompanied it; nor to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (PATRICK, however, thinks there is); though there is to the Flood (Job 22:17); and these events, happening in Job's vicinity, would have been striking illustrations of the argument for God's interposition in destroying the wicked and vindicating the righteous, had Job and his friends known of them. Nor is there any undoubted reference to the Jewish law, ritual, and priesthood. 7. The religion of Job is that which prevailed among the patriarchs previous to the law; sacrifices performed by the head of the family; no officiating priesthood, temple, or consecrated altar.

THE WRITER.--All the foregoing facts accord with Job himself having been the author. The style of thought, imagery, and manners, are such as we should look for in the work of an Arabian emir. There is precisely that degree of knowledge of primitive tradition (see Job 31:33, as to Adam) which was universally spread abroad in the days of Noah and Abraham, and which was subsequently embodied in the early chapters of Genesis. Job, in his speeches, shows that he was much more competent to compose the work than Elihu, to whom LIGHTFOOT attributes it. The style forbids its being attributed to Moses, to whom its composition is by some attributed, "whilst he was among the Midianites, about 1520 B.C." But the fact, that it, though not a Jewish book, appears among the Hebrew sacred writings, makes it likely that it came to the knowledge of Moses during the forty years which he passed in parts of Arabia, chiefly near Horeb; and that he, by divine guidance, introduced it as a sacred writing to the Israelites, to whom, in their affliction, the patience and restoration of Job were calculated to be a lesson of especial utility. That it is inspired appears from the fact that Paul (1Co 3:19) quotes it (Job 5:13) with the formula, "It is written." Our Savior, too Mat 24:28), plainly refers to Job 29:30. Compare also Jam 4:10 and 1Pe 5:6 with Job 22:29; Rom 11:34-35 with Job 15:8. It is probably the oldest book in the world. It stands among the Hagiographa in the threefold division of Scripture into the Law, the Prophets, and the Hagiographa ("Psalms," Luk 24:44).

DESIGN OF THE BOOK.--It is a public debate in poetic form on an important question concerning the divine government; moreover the prologue and epilogue, which are in prose, shed the interest of a living history over the debate, which would otherwise be but a contest of abstract reasonings. To each speaker of the three friends three speeches are assigned. Job having no one to stand by him is allowed to reply to each speech of each of the three. Eliphaz, as the oldest, leads the way. Zophar, at his third turn, failed to speak, thus virtually owning himself overcome (Job 27:1-23). Therefore Job continued his reply, which forms three speeches (Job 26:1-14; Job 27:1-23; Job 28:1-28; Job 29:1-31:40). Elihu (Job 32:1-37:24) is allowed four speeches. Jehovah makes three addresses (Job 38:1-41:34). Thus, throughout there is a tripartite division. The whole is divided into three parts--the prologue, poem proper, and epilogue. The poem, into three--(1) The dispute of Job and his three friends; (2) The address of Elihu; (3) The address of God. There are three series in the controversy, and in the same order. The epilogue (Job 42:1-17) also is threefold; Job's justification, reconciliation with his friends, restoration. The speakers also in their successive speeches regularly advance from less to greater vehemence. With all this artificial composition, everything seems easy and natural.

The question to be solved, as exemplified in the case of Job, is, Why are the righteous afflicted consistently with God's justice? The doctrine of retribution after death, no doubt, is the great solution of the difficulty. And to it Job plainly refers in Job 14:14, and Job 19:25. The objection to this, that the explicitness of the language on the resurrection in Job is inconsistent with the obscurity on the subject in the early books of the Old Testament, is answered by the fact that Job enjoyed the divine vision (Job 38:1; Job 42:5), and therefore, by inspiration, foretold these truths. Next, the revelations made outside of Israel being few needed to be the more explicit; thus Balaam's prophecy (Num 24:17) was clear enough to lead the wise men of the East by the star (Mat 2:2); and in the age before the written law, it was the more needful for God not to leave Himself without witness of the truth. Still Job evidently did not fully realize the significance designed by the Spirit in his own words (compare 1Pe 1:11-12). The doctrine, though existing, was not plainly revealed or at least understood. Hence he does not mainly refer to this solution. Yes, and even now, we need something in addition to this solution. David, who firmly believed in a future retribution (Psa 16:10; Psa 17:15), still felt the difficulty not entirely solved thereby (Psa. 83:1-18). The solution is not in Job's or in his three friends' speeches. It must, therefore, be in Elihu's. God will hold a final judgment, no doubt, to clear up all that seems dark in His present dealings; but He also now providentially and morally governs the world and all the events of human life. Even the comparatively righteous are not without sin which needs to be corrected. The justice and love of God administer the altogether deserved and merciful correction. Affliction to the godly is thus mercy and justice in disguise. The afflicted believer on repentance sees this. "Via crucis, via salutis" ["The way of the cross, the way of deliverance"]. Though afflicted, the godly are happier even now than the ungodly, and when affliction has attained its end, it is removed by the Lord. In the Old Testament the consolations are more temporal and outward; in the New Testament, more spiritual; but in neither to the entire exclusion of the other. "Prosperity," says BACON, "is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity that of the New Testament, which is the mark of God's more especial favor. Yet even in the Old Testament, if you listen to David's harp, you shall hear as many hearse-like airs as carols; and the pencil of the Holy Ghost has labored more in describing the afflictions of Job than the felicities of Solomon. Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes." This solution of Elihu is seconded by the addresses of God, in which it is shown God must be just (because He is God), as Elihu had shown how God can be just, and yet the righteous be afflicted. It is also acquiesced in by Job, who makes no reply. God reprimands the "three" friends, but not Elihu. Job's general course is approved; he is directed to intercede for his friends, and is restored to double his former prosperity.

POETRY.--In all countries poetry is the earliest form of composition as being best retained in the memory. In the East especially it was customary for sentiments to be preserved in a terse, proverbial, and poetic form (called maschal). Hebrew poetry is not constituted by the rhythm or meter, but in a form peculiar to itself: 1. In an alphabetical arrangement somewhat like our acrostic. For instance, Lam. 1:1-22. 2. The same verse repeated at intervals; as in Psa 42:1-11; Psa. 107:1-43. 3. Rhythm of gradation. Psalms of degrees, Psa. 120:1-134:3, in which the expression of the previous verse is resumed and carried forward in the next (Psa 121:1-8). 4. The chief characteristic of Hebrew poetry is parallelism, or the correspondence of the same ideas in the parallel clauses. The earliest instance is Enoch's prophecy (Jud 1:14), and Lamech's parody of it (Gen 4:23). Three kinds occur: (1) The synonymous parallelism, in which the second is a repetition of the first, with or without increase of force (Psa 22:27; Isa 15:1); sometimes with double parallelism (Isa 1:15). (2) The antithetic, in which the idea of the second clause is the converse of that in the first (Pro 10:1). (3) The synthetic, where there is a correspondence between different propositions, noun answering to noun, verb to verb, member to member, the sentiment, moreover, being not merely echoed, or put in contrast, but enforced by accessory ideas (Job 3:3-9). Also alternate (Isa 51:19). "Desolation and destruction, famine and sword," that is, desolation by famine, and destruction by the sword. Introverted; where the fourth answers to the first, and the third to the second (Mat 7:6). Parallelism thus often affords a key to the interpretation. For fuller information, see LOWTH (Introduction to Isaiah, and Lecture on Hebrew Poetry) and HERDER (Spirit of Hebrew Poetry, translated by Marsh). The simpler and less artificial forms of parallelism prevail in Job--a mark of its early age.

JFB: Job (Outline)

• THE HOLINESS OF JOB, HIS WEALTH, &c. (Job 1:1-5)
• SATAN, APPEARING BEFORE GOD, FALSELY ACCUSES JOB. (Job 1:6-12)
• SATAN FURTHER TEMPTS JOB. (Job 2:1-8)
• JOB REPROVES HIS WIFE. (Job 2:9-13)
• JOB CURSES THE DAY OF HIS BIRTH AND WISHES FOR DEATH. (Job 3:1-19)
• HE COMPLAINS OF LIFE BECAUSE OF HIS ANGUISH. (Job 3:20-26)
• FIRST SPEECH OF ELIPHAZ. (Job 4:1-21)
• ELIPHAZ' CONCLUSION FROM THE VISION. (Job 5:1-27)
• REPLY OF JOB TO ELIPHAZ. (Job 6:1-30)
• JOB EXCUSES HIS DESIRE FOR DEATH. (Job 7:1-21)
• THE ADDRESS OF BILDAD. (Job 8:1-22)
• REPLY OF JOB TO BILDAD. (Job 9:1-35)
• JOB'S REPLY TO BILDAD CONTINUED. (Job 10:1-22)
• FIRST SPEECH OF ZOPHAR. (Job 11:1-20) Zophar assails Job for his empty words, and indirectly, the two friends, for their weak reply. Taciturnity is highly prized among Orientals (Pro 10:8, Pro 10:19).
• JOB'S REPLY TO ZOPHAR. (Job 12:1-14:22)
• JOB'S REPLY TO ZOPHAR CONTINUED. (Job 13:1-28)
• JOB PASSES FROM HIS OWN TO THE COMMON MISERY OF MANKIND. (Job 14:1-22)
• SECOND SPEECH OF ELIPHAZ. (Job 15:1-35)
• JOB'S REPLY. (Job 16:1-22) (Job 13:4).
• JOB'S ANSWER CONTINUED. (Job 17:1-16)
• REPLY OF BILDAD. (Job 18:1-21)
• JOB'S REPLY TO BILDAD. (Job 19:1-29)
• REPLY OF ZOPHAR. (Job 20:1-29)
• JOB'S ANSWER. (Job 21:1-34)
• AS BEFORE, ELIPHAZ BEGINS. (Job 22:1-30) Eliphaz shows that man's goodness does not add to, or man's badness take from, the happiness of God; therefore it cannot be that God sends prosperity to some and calamities on others for His own advantage; the cause of the goods and ills sent must lie in the men themselves (Psa 16:2; Luk 17:10; Act 17:25; 1Ch 29:14). So Job's calamities must arise from guilt. Eliphaz, instead of meeting the facts, tries to show that it could not be so.
• JOB'S ANSWER. (Job 23:1-17)
• BILDAD'S REPLY. (Job 25:1-6) Power and terror, that is, terror-inspiring power.
• JOB'S REPLY. (Job 26:1-14)
• JOB'S SPEECH CONTINUED. (Job 28:1-28)
• SPEECH OF ELIHU. (Job 32:1-37:24) Prose (poetry begins with "I am young").
• ADDRESS TO JOB, AS (Job 32:1-22) TO THE FRIENDS. (Job 33:1-33)
• GOD'S SECOND ADDRESS. (Job 40:1-24)
• JOB'S PENITENT REPLY. (Job 42:1-6) In the first clause he owns God to be omnipotent over nature, as contrasted with his own feebleness, which God had proved (Job 40:15; Job 41:34); in the second, that God is supremely just (which, in order to be governor of the world, He must needs be) in all His dealings, as contrasted with his own vileness (Job 42:6), and incompetence to deal with the wicked as a just judge (Job 40:8-14).

TSK: Job (Book Introduction)

A large aquatic animal, perhaps the extinct dinosaur, plesiosaurus, the exact meaning is unknown. Some think this to be a crocodile but from the description in Job 41:1-41:34 this is patently absurd. It appears to be a large fire breathing animal of some sort. Just as the bomardier beetle has an explosion producing mechanism, so the great sea dragon may have an explosive producing mechanism to enable it to be a real fire breathing dragon.

TSK: Job 3 (Chapter Introduction)

Overview

Job 3:1, Job curses the day and services of his birth; Job 3:13, The ease of death; Job 3:20, He complains of life, because of his anguish.

Poole: Job 3 (Chapter Introduction)

CHAPTER 3

Job curseth the day and services of his birth, Job 3:1-12 . The ease and honours of death, Job 3:13-19 . Life in anguish matter of complaint, Job 3:20-24 . What he feared is now come upon him, Job 3:25,26 .

He spake freely and boldly, as this phrase is used, Pro 31:8,9 Eph 6:19 , and elsewhere,

MHCC: Job (Book Introduction)

This book is so called from Job, whose prosperity, afflictions, and restoration, are here recorded. He lived soon after Abraham, or perhaps before that patriarch. Most likely it was written by Job himself, and it is the most ancient book in existence. The instructions to be learned from the patience of Job, and from his trials, are as useful now, and as much needed as ever. We live under the same Providence, we have the same chastening Father, and there is the same need for correction unto righteousness. The fortitude and patience of Job, though not small, gave way in his severe troubles; but his faith was fixed upon the coming of his Redeemer, and this gave him stedfastness and constancy, though every other dependence, particularly the pride and boast of a self-righteous spirit, was tried and consumed. Another great doctrine of the faith, particularly set forth in the book of Job, is that of Providence. It is plain, from this history, that the Lord watched over his servant Job with the affection of a wise and loving father.

MHCC: Job 3 (Chapter Introduction)

(Job 3:1-10) Job complains that he was born.

(Job 3:11-19) Job complaining.

(Job 3:20-26) He complains of his life.

Matthew Henry: Job (Book Introduction)

An Exposition, with Practical Observations, of The Book of Job

This book of Job stands by itself, is not connected with any other, and is therefore to be considered alone. Many copies of the Hebrew Bible place it after the book of Psalms, and some after the Proverbs, which perhaps has given occasion to some learned men to imagine it to have been written by Isaiah or some of the later prophets. But, as the subject appears to have been much more ancient, so we have no reason to think but that the composition of the book was, and that therefore it is most fitly placed first in this collection of divine morals: also, being doctrinal, it is proper to precede and introduce the book of Psalms, which is devotional, and the book of Proverbs, which is practical; for how shall we worship or obey a God whom we know not? As to this book,

I. We are sure that it is given by inspiration of God, though we are not certain who was the penman of it. The Jews, though no friends to Job, because he was a stranger to the commonwealth of Israel, yet, as faithful conservators of the oracles of God committed to them, always retained this book in their sacred canon. The history is referred to by one apostle (Jam 5:11) and one passage (Job 5:13) is quoted by another apostle, with the usual form of quoting scripture, It is written, 1Co 3:19. It is the opinion of many of the ancients that this history was written by Moses himself in Midian, and delivered to his suffering brethren in Egypt, for their support and comfort under their burdens, and the encouragement of their hope that God would in due time deliver and enrich them, as he did this patient sufferer. Some conjecture that it was written originally in Arabic, and afterwards translated into Hebrew, for the use of the Jewish church, by Solomon (so Monsieur Jurieu) or some other inspired writer. It seems most probable to me that Elihu was the penman of it, at least of the discourses, because (Job 32:15, Job 32:16) he mingles the words of a historian with those of a disputant: but Moses perhaps wrote the first two chapters and the last, to give light to the discourses; for in them God is frequently called Jehovah, but not once in all the discourses, except Job 12:9. That name was but little known to the patriarchs before Moses, Exo 6:3. If Job wrote it himself, some of the Jewish writers themselves own him a prophet among the Gentiles; if Elihu, we find he had a spirit of prophecy which filled him with matter and constrained him, Job 32:18.

II. We are sure that it is, for the substance of it, a true history, and not a romance, though the dialogues are poetical. No doubt there was such a man as Job; the prophet Ezekiel names him with Noah and Daniel, Eze 14:14. The narrative we have here of his prosperity and piety, his strange afflictions and exemplary patience, the substance of his conferences with his friends, and God's discourse with him out of the whirlwind, with his return at length to a very prosperous condition, no doubt is exactly true, though the inspired penman is allowed the usual liberty of putting the matter of which Job and his friends discoursed into his own words.

III. We are sure that it is very ancient, though we cannot fix the precise time either when Job lived or when the book was written. So many, so evident, are its hoary hairs, the marks of its antiquity, that we have reason to think it of equal date with the book of Genesis itself, and that holy Job was contemporary with Isaac and Jacob; though not coheir with them of the promise of the earthly Canaan, yet a joint-expectant with them of the better country, that is, the heavenly. Probably he was of the posterity of Nahor, Abraham's brother, whose first-born was Uz (Gen 22:21), and in whose family religion was for some ages kept up, as appears, Gen 31:53, where God is called, not only the God of Abraham, but the God of Nahor. He lived before the age of man was shortened to seventy or eighty, as it was in Moses's time, before sacrifices were confined to one altar, before the general apostasy of the nations from the knowledge and worship of the true God, and while yet there was no other idolatry known than the worship of the sun and moon, and that punished by the Judges, Job 31:26-28. He lived while God was known by the name of God Almighty more than by the name of Jehovah; for he is called Shaddai - the Almighty, above thirty times in this book. He lived while divine knowledge was conveyed, not by writing, but by tradition; for to that appeals are here made, Job 8:8; Job 21:29; Job 15:18; Job 5:1. And we have therefore reason to think that he lived before Moses, because here is no mention at all of the deliverance of Israel out of Egypt, or the giving of the law. There is indeed one passage which might be made to allude to the drowning of Pharaoh (Job 26:12): He divideth the sea with his power, and by his understanding he smiteth through Rahab, which name Egypt is frequently called by in scripture, as Psa 87:4; Psa 89:10; Isa 51:9. But that may as well refer to the proud waves of the sea. We conclude therefore that we are here got back to the patriarchal age, and, besides its authority, we receive this book with veneration for its antiquity.

IV. We are sure that it is of great use to the church, and to every good Christian, though there are many passages in it dark and hard to be understood. We cannot perhaps be confident of the true meaning of every Arabic word and phrase we meet with in it. It is a book that finds a great deal of work for the critics; but enough is plain to make the whole profitable, and it was all written for our learning.

1. This noble poem presents to us, in very clear and lively characters, these five things among others: - (1.) A monument of primitive theology. The first and great principles of the light of nature, on which natural religion is founded, are here, in a warm, and long, and learned dispute, not only taken for granted on all sides and not the least doubt made of them, but by common consent plainly laid down as eternal truths, illustrated and urged as affecting commanding truths. Were ever the being of God, his glorious attributes and perfections, his unsearchable wisdom, his irresistible power, his inconceivable glory, his inflexible justice, and his incontestable sovereignty, discoursed of with more clearness, fulness, reverence, and divine eloquence, than in this book? The creation of the world, and the government of it, are here admirably described, not as matters of nice speculation, but as laying most powerful obligations upon us to fear and serve, to submit to and trust in, our Creator, owner, Lord, and ruler. Moral good and evil, virtue and vice, were never drawn more to the life (the beauty of the one and the deformity of the other) than in this book; nor the inviolable rule of God's judgment more plainly laid down, That happy are the righteous, it shall be well with them; and Woe to the wicked, it shall be ill with them. These are not questions of the schools to keep the learned world in action, nor engines of state to keep the unlearned world in awe; no, it appears by this book that they are sacred truths of undoubted certainty, and which all the wise and sober part of mankind have in every age subscribed and submitted to. (2.) It presents us with a specimen of Gentile piety. This great saint descended probably not from Abraham, but Nahor; or, if from Abraham, not from Isaac, but from one of the sons of the concubines that were sent into the east-country (Gen 25:6); or, if from Isaac, yet not from Jacob, but Esau; so that he was out of the pale of the covenant of peculiarity, no Israelite, no proselyte, and yet none like him for religion, nor such a favourite of heaven upon this earth. It was a truth therefore, before St. Peter perceived it, that in every nation he that fears God and works righteousness is accepted of him, Act 10:35. There were children of God scattered abroad (Joh 11:52) besides the incorporated children of the kingdom, Mat 8:11, Mat 8:12. (3.) It presents us with an exposition of the book of Providence, and a clear and satisfactory solution of many of the difficult and obscure passages of it. The prosperity of the wicked and the afflictions of the righteous have always been reckoned two as hard chapters as any in that book; but they are here expounded, and reconciled with the divine wisdom, purity, and goodness, by the end of these things. (4.) It presents us with a great example of patience and close adherence to God in the midst of the sorest calamities. Sir Richard Blackmore's most ingenious pen, in his excellent preface to his paraphrase on this book, makes Job a hero proper for an epic poem; for, says he, " He appears brave in distress and valiant in affliction, maintains his virtue, and with that his character, under the most exasperating provocations that the malice of hell could invent, and thereby gives a most noble example of passive fortitude, a character no way inferior to that of the active hero," etc. (5.) It presents us with an illustrious type of Christ, the particulars of which we shall endeavour to take notice of as we go along. In general, Job was a great sufferer, was emptied and humbled, but in order to his greater glory. So Christ abased himself, that we might be exalted. The learned bishop Patrick quotes St. Jerome ore than once speaking of Job as a type of Christ, who for the job that was set before him endured the cross, who was persecuted, for a time, by men and devils, and seemed forsaken of God too, but was raised to be an intercessor even for his friends and had added affliction to his misery. When the apostle speaks of the patience of Job he immediately takes notice of the end of the Lord, that is, of the Lord Jesus (as some understand it), typified by Job, Jam 5:11.

2. In this book we have, (1.) The history of Job's sufferings, and his patience under them (ch. 1, Job 2:1-13, not without a mixture of human frailty, ch. 3. (2.) A dispute between him and his friends upon them, in which, [1.] The opponents were Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. [2.] The respondent was Job. [3.] The moderators were, First, Elihu, ch. 32-37. Secondly, God himself, ch. 38-41. (3.) The issue of all in Job's honour and prosperity, ch. 42. Upon the whole, we learn that many are the afflictions of the righteous, but that when the Lord delivers them out of them all the trial of their faith will be found to praise, and honour, and glory.

Matthew Henry: Job 3 (Chapter Introduction)

" You have heard of the patience of Job," says the apostle, Jam 5:11. So we have, and of his impatience too. We wondered that a man should be so patient as he was (ch. 1 and Job 2:1-13), but we wonder also that a good man should be so impatient as he is in this chapter, where we find him cursing his day, and, in passion, I. Complaining that he was born (Job 3:1-10). II. Complaining that he did not die as soon as he was born (Job 3:11-19). III. Complaining that his life was now continued when he was in misery (Job 3:20-26). In this it must be owned that Job sinned with his lips, and it is written, not for our imitation, but our admonition, that he who things he stands may take heed lest he fall.

Constable: Job (Book Introduction)

Introduction

Title

This book, like many others in the Old Testament, got its name from the central character in it rather than from its writer. While it is possible that Job may have written it, there is no concrete evidence that he did.

"Job" means "hated" or "the much persecuted." Perhaps "Job" was a nickname his friends gave him during his suffering. Job is the title of the book in the Hebrew, Greek (Septuagint), Latin (Vulgate), and English Bibles.

Date

Concerning the time the events recorded took place there have been many views ranging from the patriarchal age of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (beginning about 2100 B.C.) to the sixth century B.C.

Internal evidence suggests that Job lived in the patriarchal period. The length of his life (either 140 or about 210 years; 42:16) is similar to that of Terah (205 years), Abraham (175 years), Isaac (180 years), and Jacob (147 years). The writer measured Job's wealth in terms of his livestock. This is how Moses evaluated the wealth of Abraham and Jacob (1:3; 42:12; cf. Gen. 12:16; 13:2; 30:43; 32:5). The Sabeans and Chaldeans (1:15, 17) were nomads during the patriarchal period but not later. Job was the priest of his family (1:5) a condition that became less common when nations in the Near East developed more organization. Names of people and places in the book were also common in the patriarchal age (e.g., Sheba, Tima, Eliphaz, Uz, Job). Genesis, the Mari documents, and the Egyptian Execration texts, all of which refer to life in the Near East at this time, also refer to these names.

"The idea that Job has an Edomite background is as old as the LXX, which equates Job with Jobab, king of Edom (Gn. 36:33)."¹

"Most recent [liberal] writers are agreed that in its original form the book was of post-exilic origin, and the secondary parts of later composition."²

Internal evidence, however, has led many careful students of the book to conclude that it was the work of one person. Perhaps someone else added a few minor touches later under divine inspiration (e.g., 42:16-17). If Job lived in the patriarchal period, as the evidence seems to suggest, what clues are there that someone did not write it then or very soon afterwards? The detailed recounting of the conversations that took place certainly suggests a composition date fairly close to that of the actual events. That has been the position of Jewish and Christian scholars until destructive criticism became popular in the last few centuries. Critics point to the fact that oral tradition was very exact in the ancient world and that people could have transmitted Job's story by mouth for generations and retained its purity. With the Holy Spirit's superintending work it could have been, but there is no evidence that this is what happened. Literacy was widespread in the ancient world at this time.³ Critics further point out that in the process of social evolution composition of a work such as this book was more typical at a date much later than the patriarchal period. Yet again there is no evidence that someone wrote it later. The simpler explanation is that someone wrote it early. Since there is no proof that someone wrote it later, most conservative scholars have continued to prefer the traditional early date of composition theory.

Writer

The book does not identify its writer. Furthermore the ancient Hebrews could not agree on who wrote it. Consequently many different scholars have made guesses as to who the writer was.

From the patriarchal period Job himself is the favored candidate, though some scholars have nominated Elihu. These men seem to be the most likely of the chief characters to have preserved the record of Job's trials. There are many examples of ancient extra-biblical writings in which the author spoke of himself in the third person, so we need not eliminate Job on that ground. The book reads as though an eyewitness of the events recorded wrote it.

Jewish tradition favored Moses as the writer. Moses recorded other events during the patriarchal period in Genesis, he was familiar with desert life, and he had enough ability to write such a book as this one.

Solomon has supporters mainly because he composed other poetic biblical literature (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon). Moreover there are some similarities between Job and Proverbs such as the relationship between fearing God and being wise.

Other scholars have suggested later writers including Hezekiah, Isaiah, and Ezra.

Of course, the writer may have been none of these individuals. No one knows for sure who wrote Job. I tend to prefer a contemporary of Job or Job himself because of the antiquity of this view and the fact that no one has proved it unsatisfactory.

Scope

It is also difficult to determine how much time the events narrated in the book cover.

The first chapter tells about Job's life before his trial, and the last chapter reveals what happened after it until Job's death. The chapters in between deal with a relatively short period in Job's long life. How long was this period?

We have a few clues. Job referred to months when he spoke of his sufferings (7:3; 29:2). In view of Job's physical symptoms his ailments seem to have bothered him for several months at least. He may have suffered for years. However, Job said the same people who had respected him previously had come to reject and avoid him. He implied that his rejection was fairly recent.

The main part of the book contains dialogue that took place between a few individuals. There is no indication in the text that extended periods of time interrupted Job's sojourn at the city dump. It seems to have continued for a few days at the most, though the conversations may have stopped and then restarted. The writer may have telescoped the events to keep the narrative flowing smoothly. It appears that the scope of the main action at the city dump lasted no longer than a few days or possibly weeks.

Genre

Job is primarily a combination of at least three literary types: lawsuit,⁴ lament,⁵ and controversy dialogue.⁶ The larger category is wisdom literature. However there are so many different types of literature in this book that many writers despair of assigning one type as the dominant one.

"The book of Job defies all efforts to establish its literary genre. While it has been viewed as an epic,⁷ a tragedy,⁸ and a parable,⁹ upon close analysis it is none of these even though it exhibits properties belonging to each of them. As Robert Gordis observes, the author of Job has created his own literary genre.¹⁰ The book is didactic in the sense that the author seeks to teach religious truth, a task which he executes primarily by means of lyrical poetry expressive of deep emotions."¹¹

"The book of Job is an astonishing mixture of almost every kind of literature to be found in the Old Testament. Many individual pieces can be isolated and identified as proverbs, riddles, hymns, laments, curses, lyrical nature poems."¹²

"One should think of this aspect of interpretation [i.e., genre] as being like the Olympics, a grand occasion made up of a variety of sports. Though it is all sport, each game is played by its own rules and has its own expectations about how to play the game. The variety of literature is the same way. It all has a message, but it conveys that message in a variety of ways and with a variety of expectations. To try to play basketball with soccer's rules will never work, though both use a ball and require foot speed. Or think of musical instruments, they all make music, but in different ways with different sounds. One cannot play the violin like a piano or drums; nor should one expect a violin to sound like either a piano or the kettledrum! In the same way, to read the poetry of the Psalms like a historical book is to miss the emotional and pictorial impact of the message, though both genres convey reality about people's experience with God."¹³

Message

What this book is all about has been the subject of considerable debate. Many people think God gave it to us to provide His answer to the age-old problem of suffering. In particular, many believe it is in the Bible to help us understand why good people suffer. This is undoubtedly one of the purposes of the book and one that I want to develop at some length. However, I think another purpose is more foundational than this one.

Other people have focused on the great questions Job voiced in the book. During his suffering, when God allowed Satan to knock all the props that support human earthly existence out from under him, Job got down to the most basic needs that people face. He made many profound observations about life. He articulated the most fundamental needs that human beings have. He voiced the greatest philosophical questions about life. These questions are an extremely important contribution of the book and one that I plan to give some attention. Nevertheless I think God has inspired and preserved the message of the Book of Job primarily for another reason.

I believe He did so because this book proves that the basic relationship that God has established with people does not rest on retribution but on grace. This is the message statement. Let me explain it.

In our study of the Old Testament historical books I have pointed out that God blesses people for two reasons. These are His sovereign choice to bless and people's response of trust and obedience to Him.

Because we cannot control God's sovereign choice to bless some people more than others we tend to forget that. We tend to focus on what we can control to some extent, namely our securing His blessing by trusting and obeying Him. This is understandable and legitimate, but it leads to a potential problem. The problem is that we may conclude that we can control God. Since God blesses those who trust and obey Him and He curses those who do not, we may conclude that if we trust and obey God, He owes us blessing.

This conclusion assumes that the basis of God's relationship with people is retribution. If I am good, God will reward me with blessing in some form, but if I am bad, He will punish me somehow. While this is normally the way God deals with human beings it is not always His method. Consequently there must be a more fundamental principle that governs God's dealings with people. On what basis does God consistently deal with us?

Throughout the Book of Job this is the major question that God is answering. Every major character in the book--Job, Eliphaz, Bildad, Zopher, and Elihu--assumed that God governed humankind on the basis of retribution. They believed there were no exceptions to the rule that God blesses good people and punishes bad people.

Job concluded that God was unjust since he had been good but God was allowing him to suffer. Job's wife agreed with him. Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zopher believed that Job must be a bad man instead of a good man since he was suffering. Elihu felt the solution to this apparent exception to the rule was not God's injustice but Job's ignorance rather than his sin. Elihu took a more agnostic approach to the solution of Job's problem. He suspected Job was a bad man, but he wasn't as sure about that as Job's other three friends were.

The Book of Job reveals that while God usually blesses the godly and punishes the ungodly, He does not always do so. There is a more fundamental basis from which God operates. That basis is His own free choice to bless or not bless whom He will.

We might conclude then that the basis of God's dealings with mankind is His sovereignty. However, that answer goes too far back. God's sovereignty really has nothing to do with how He rules. The attribute of sovereignty only sets forth God's position as supreme ruler. How does God rule sovereignly? If it is not on the basis of retribution, on what basis is it?

Evidence in the Book of Job points to God's grace as the basis of His dealings with people. Instead of always dealing with us in retribution, God always deals with us in grace. What does this mean?

This means that instead of responding to our good actions with blessing or our bad actions with cursing God initiates favor toward us without our deserving it.

What is the evidence in the Book of Job that God always deals with people on this basis?

This comes through in God's responses to Job (chs. 38-41). In replying to Job, God essentially reminded him of how good He had been to Job. He pointed out how much wiser and stronger He was than Job. In all of this, God wanted to impress Job with His favor toward the patriarch. That Job got the point is clear from the fact that when God finished speaking Job simply rested in God (42:6). He returned to his joy in being the recipient of God's unmerited favor even though God had not answered his questions.

How does the conflict in heaven that we learn about in chapters 1 and 2 fit into this view? Satan too believed that retribution was the basis on which God deals with people (1:9-11). God proceeded to show him that he was wrong. God allowed calamities to overtake a good man. Then when Job's trouble was all over, God blessed him even though he did not trust and obey God as he should have during his trials (42:12-17).

Satan has consistently failed to appreciate God's grace. Instead of being grateful for his own blessings, he has been in rebellion to obtain more than God gave him. Moreover he has led people to do the same things (cf. Gen. 3; Matt. 4).

I would also like to comment on a fourth possible message of the book that some have suggested. Some students of Job have said that the whole purpose of the book is to show God's superiority over Satan. Not many people hold this view, but it has appealed to some. The main problem with this interpretation, from my viewpoint, is that the dialogues and monologues that constitute the bulk of the book (in chapters 3-41) contribute nothing to this theme. While they do contain references to God's greatness, they do not deal with the issue of God's superiority over Satan.

Finally let me make some observations about the great revelation of this book, namely that the basis for God's dealings with man is His grace rather than His retribution.

First, the Book of Job appears to have been one of the first books of the Bible that God gave as special revelation if not the first. If it was one of the first, its subject would have been one of the most foundational for human beings to understand as history unfolded. What more basic revelation could God have given than the message of this book? The knowledge that God initiates favor toward His creatures without their earning or deserving it is at the heart of God's plan of salvation and the doctrine of God. When you think of Job, think of grace (cf. Ps. 103:10).

Second, like Satan, we tend to disbelieve that God wants the best for us, and we doubt that He will give it to us. Consequently we try to secure what we want for ourselves. We also become ungrateful for God's grace. Ingratitude is at the root of much sin as well as much unhappiness in life. Rejoice in God's grace. Cultivate a spirit of thankfulness (1 Thess. 5:18).

Third, we tend to elevate a secondary principle of God's dealings with people (retribution) into the primary position because it enables us to feel we have some control over God. In this way we can get God to serve us rather than serving God. If I can obligate God to bless me by being good, then God owes me something. Many people, of course, believe God owes them salvation because they are good people. However, we cannot dictate to God how He should bless us. We can count on His promises to bless in certain ways when we relate to Him in certain ways. Yet if God does not bless us as we wish He would, when we do not have His promise, we can still count on the fact that He will bless us ultimately. He will do so because it is His will and He has promised to bless the righteous. His basis of dealing with us is grace.

What about the unsaved? If God wants to bless everyone, why does He send some to eternal torment? The fact that some people choose not to accept God's grace does not mean He does not reach out to them with grace. The whole Bible is a testimony to the fact that God always has and always will reach out to humankind offering unmerited favor. The basis of God's dealings with humankind is grace. His common grace extends to all (Rom. 1; Eph. 1). God does not give us what we deserve. He gives us much better than we deserve.

Constable: Job (Outline)

Outline

I. Prologue chs. 1-2

A. Job's character 1:1-5

B. Job's calamities 1:6-2:10

1. The first test 1:6-22

2. The second test 2:1-10

C. Job's comforters 2:11-13

II. The dialogue concerning the basis of the divine-human relationship 3:1-42:6

A. Job's personal lament ch. 3

1. The wish that he had not been born 3:1-10

2. The wish that he had died at birth 3:11-19

3. The wish that he could die then 3:20-26

B. The first cycle of speeches between Job and his three friends chs. 4-14

1. Eliphaz's first speech chs. 4-5

2. Job's first reply to Eliphaz chs. 6-7

3. Bildad's first speech ch. 8

4. Job's first reply to Bildad chs. 9-10

5. Zophar's first speech ch. 11

6. Job's first reply to Zophar chs. 12-14

C. The second cycle of speeches between Job and his three friends chs. 15-21

1. Eliphaz's second speech ch. 15

2. Job's second reply to Eliphaz chs. 16-17

3. Bildad's second speech ch. 18

4. Job's second reply to Bildad ch. 19

5. Zophar's second speech ch. 20

6. Job's second reply to Zophar ch. 21

D. The third cycle of speeches between Job and his three friends chs. 22-27

1. Eliphaz's third speech ch. 22

2. Job's third reply to Eliphaz chs. 23-24

3. Bildad's third speech ch. 25

4. Job's third reply to Bildad chs. 26-27

E. Job's concluding soliloquies chs. 28-31

1. Job's discourse on God's wisdom ch. 28

2. Job's defense of his innocence chs. 29-31

F. Elihu's speeches chs. 32-37

1. The introduction of Elihu 32:1-5

2. Elihu's first speech 32:6-33:33

3. Elihu's second speech ch. 34

4. Elihu's third speech ch. 35

5. Elihu's fourth speech chs. 36-37

G. The cycle of speeches between Job and God 38:1-42:6

1. God's first speech 38:1-40:2

2. Job's first reply to God 40:3-5

3. God's second speech 40:6-41:34

4. Job's second reply to God 42:1-6

III. Epilogue 42:7-17

A. Job's friends 42:7-9

B. Job's fortune 42:10-17

A structural outline of Job14
Prologue	Job's opening lament	Dialogue-dispute(3 cycles)	Interlude on Wisdom	Monologues (3 cycles)	Job's closing contribution	Epilogue
Chs. 1-2	Ch. 3	Chs. 4-14 Chs. 15-- 21 Chs. 22-- 27	Ch. 28	Chs. 29-- 31 (Job) Chs. 32-- 37 (Elihu) Chs. 38-- 41 (God)	Chs. 40:3-5; 42:1-6	Ch. 42:7-17

Constable: Job

Job

Bibliography

Andersen, Francis I. Job. Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries series. Leicester, Eng. and Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1976.

Archer, Gleason L., Jr. A Survey of Old Testament Introduction. Revised ed. Chicago: Moody Press, 1974.

Barnes, Albert. Notes Critical, Illustrative, and Practical on the Book of Job. 2 vols. Glasgow: Blackie & Son, 1847.

Barr, James. "Hebrew Orthography and the Book of Job." Journal of Semitic Studies 30:1 (Spring 1985):1-33.

Baxter, J. Sidlow. Explore the Book. 6 vols. London: Marshall, Morgan, and Scott, 1965.

Beeby, H. D. "Elihu--Job's Mediator." South East Asia Journal of Theology 7:2 (October 1965):33-54.

Blackwood, Andrew W. A Devotional Introduction to Job. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1959.

Bock, Darrell L. "Interpreting the Bible--How Texts Speak to Us." In Progressive Dispensationalism, pp. 76-105. By Craig A. Blaising and Darrell L. Bock. Wheaton: Victor Books, 1993.

Brichto, Herbert Chanan. "Kin, Cult, Land and Afterlife--A Biblical Complex." Hebrew Union College Annual 44 (1973):1-54.

Bullock, C. Hassell. An Introduction to the Poetic Books of the Old Testament. Chicago: Moody Press, 1979.

Burns, John Barclay. "The Identity of Death's First-Born (Job XVIII 13)." Vetus Testamentum 37:3 (July 1987):362-64.

Cansdale, George. Animals of Bible Lands. London: Paternoster Press, 1970.

Carson, D. A. How Long, O Lord? Reflections on Suffering and Evil. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1990.

Carter, Charles W. "The Book of Job." In The Wesleyan Bible Commentary. Edited by Charles W. Carter. 6 vols. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1968.

Constable, Thomas L. "Analysis of Bible Books--Old Testament." Paper submitted for course 685 Analysis of Bible Books--Old Testament. Dallas Theological Seminary, January 1967.

Coureyer, B. "Qui est Behemoth?" Revue Biblique 82 (1975):418-43.

Crenshaw, James L. "The Acquisition of Knowledge in Israelite Wisdom Literature." Word & World 7:3 (Summer 1987):245-52.

_____. Old Testament Wisdom. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1981.

_____. "Popular Questioning of the Justice of God in Ancient Israel." Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 82:3 (1970):380-95.

_____. "Wisdom." In Old Testament Form Criticism, pp. 225-64. Edited by John H. Hayes. San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 1974.

Cummons, Bruce D. The Problem of Suffering. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing Co., 1957.

Darby, John Nelson. Synopsis of the Books of the Bible. 5 vols. Revised ed. New York: Loizeaux Brothers Publishers, 1942.

Delitzsch, Franz. Biblical Commentary on the Book of Job. 2 vols. Translated by Francis Bolton. Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament. Reprint ed., Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1961.

Dhorme, E. A Commentary on the Book of Job. Translated by Harold Knight. 1926; reprint ed., New York: Thomas Nelson, 1967.

Dick, Michael Brennan. "The Legal Metaphor in Job 31." Catholic Biblical Quarterly 41:1 (January 1979):37-50.

Diewert, David A. "Job 7:12: Yam, Tannin and the Surveillance of Job." Journal of Biblical Literature 106:2 (1987):203-215.

"Dinosaurs and the Bible." Five Minutes with the Bible and Science Supplement to Bible-Science Newsletter 6:4 (May 1976):1-7.

Driver, Samuel R. Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament. Revised ed. New York: Scribner's, 1914.

Driver, Samuel R., and George B. Gray. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Job. International Critical Commentary series. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1921.

Ellison, H. L. A Study of Job. Paternoster Press, 1958; reprint ed., Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1973.

Epp, Theodore H. Why Do Christians Suffer? Lincoln, Nebr.: Back to the Bible Broadcast, 1955.

Estes, Daniel J. "The Hermeneutics of Biblical Lyric Poetry." Bibliotheca Sacra 152:608 (October-December 1995):413-30.

Forrest, Robert W. E. "The Creation Motif in the Book of Job." Ph.D. dissertation, McMaster University, 1975.

Freedman, David Noel. "The Elihu Speeches in the Book of Job." Harvard Theological Review 61:1 (January 1968):51-59.

Gaebelein, Arno C. The Annotated Bible. 4 vols. Reprint ed. Chicago: Moody Press, and New York: Loizeaux Brothers, Inc., 1970.

Gammie, John G. "Behemoth and Leviathan: On the Didactic and Theological Significance of Job 40:15-41:26." In Israelite Wisdom: Theological and Literary Essays in Honor of Samuel Terrien, pp. 217-31. Edited by John G. Gammie, Walter A. Brueggmann, W. Lee Humphreys, and James M. Ward. New York: Union Theological Seminary, 1978.

Gibson, Edgar C. S. The Book of Job. 1919; reprint ed. Minneapolis: Klock & Klock Christian Publishing Co., 1978.

Good, Edwin M. Irony in the Old Testament. Philadelphia: Westminister Press, 1965.

Gordis, Robert. The Book of God and Man. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965.

_____. The Book of Job. New York: KTAV Publishing House, 1978.

_____. "The Lord out of the Whirlwind." Judaism 13:1 (Winter 1964):48-63.

Gowan, Donald E. "God's Answer to Job: How Is It an Answer?" Horizons in Biblical Theology 8:2 (December 1986):85-102.

Gray, George Buchanan. The Forms of Hebrew Poetry. Library of Biblical Studies series. 1915; reprint ed. New York: KTAV Publishing House, 1972.

Habel, Norman C. The Book of Job. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1975.

Harris, R. Laird. "The Book of Job and Its Doctrine of God." Grace Journal 13:3 (Fall 1972):3-33.

Hengstenberg, E. W. "Interpreting the Book of Job." In Classical Evangelical Essays in Old Testament Interpretation, pp. 91-112. Edited by Walter C. Kaiser Jr. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1972.

Heras, Henry. "The Standard of Job's Immortality." Catholic Biblical Quarterly 11 (1949):263-79.

Hermission, Hans-Jurgen. "Observations on the Creation Theology in Wisdom." In Israelite Wisdom: Theological and Literary Essays in Honor of Samuel Terrien, pp. 43-57. Edited by John G. Gammie, Walter A. Brueggemann, W. Lee Humphreys, and John M. Ward. New York: Union Theological Seminary, 1978.

Hopkins, Hugh Evan. The Mystery of Suffering. Chicago: InterVarsity Press, 1959.

Kallen, Horace M. The Book of Job as a Greek Tragedy. New York: Hill and Wang, 1959.

Kline, Meredith G. "Job." In The Wycliffe Bible Commentary, pp. 459-90. Edited by Charles F. Pfeiffer and Everett F. Harrison. Chicago: Moody Press, 1962.

Lange, John Peter, ed. Commentary on the Holy Scriptures. 12 vols. Reprint ed., Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1960. Vol. 4: Chronicles-Job, by Otto Zockler, Fr. W. Schultz, and Howard Crosby. Translated, enlarged, and edited by James G. Murphy, Charles A. Briggs, James Strong, and L. J. Evans.

Laurin, Robert. "The Theological Structure of Job." Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 84 (1972):86-89.

Lewis, C. S. The Problem of Pain. 1940. Reprint ed. London: Collins Press, Fontana Books, 1959.

L'Heureax, Conrad. "The Ugaritic and Biblical Rephaim." Harvard Theological Review 67 (1974):265-74.

Lillie, William. "The Religious Significance of the Theophany in the Book of Job." Expository Times 68:11 (August 1957):355-58.

Maimonides, Moses. The Guide of the Perplexed. Translated by Shlomo Pines. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1963.

MacKenzie, R. A. F. " The Purpose of the Yahweh Speeches in the Book of Job." Biblica 40:2 (1959):435-45.

MacLeod. W. B. The Afflictions of the Righteous. London: Hodder and Stoughton, n.d.

McKeating, Henry. "The Central Issue of the Book of Job." Expository Times 82:8 (May 1971):244-47.

Meek, Theophile J. "Job xix 25-27." Vetus Testamentum 6 (1956):100-103.

Millard, Alan R. "The Question of Israelite Literacy." Bible Review 3:3 (Fall 1987):22-31.

Morgan, G. Campbell. The Answers of Jesus to Job. G. Campbell Morgan Library series. Fleming H. Revell, 1935; reprint ed., Grand Rapids; Baker Book House, 1973.

_____. Living Messages of the Books of the Bible. 2 vols. New York: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1912.

Northrup, Bernard. "Light on the Ice Age." Bible-Science Newsletter 14:1 (June 1976):1-4.

Orr, James. "Immortality in the Old Testament." In Classical Evangelical Essays in Old Testament Interpretation, pp. 253-65. Compiled and edited by Walter C. Kaiser Jr. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1972.

Parsons, Gregory W. "Guidelines for Understanding and Proclaiming the Book of Job." Bibliotheca Sacra 151:604 (October-December 1994):393-413.

_____. "Literary Features of the Book of Job." Bibliotheca Sacra 138:551 (July-September 1981):213-29.

_____. "The Structure and Purpose of the Book of Job." Bibliotheca Sacra 138:550 (April-June 1981):139-57.

Patrick, Dale. "The Translation of Job XLII 6." Vetus Testamentum 26:3 (July 1976):369-71.

Perdue, Leo G. "Job's Assault on Creation." Hebrew Annual Review 10 (1986):295-315.

Pope, Marvin H. Job. Anchor Bible series. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Co., 1973.

Reichert, Victor E. Job. London: Soncino Press, 1946.

Rideout, Samuel. The Book of Job. 2nd ed., New York: Loizeaux Brothers, 1943.

Robinson, Theodore H. The Poetry of the Old Testament. London: Duckworth, 1947.

Rowley, H. H. The Book of Job. New Century Bible Commentary series. Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1970; revised ed., Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1976; reprint ed., Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., and London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1983.

Rowold, Henry L. "The Theology of Creation in the Yahweh Speeches as a Solution to the Problem Posed by the Book of Job." Th.D. dissertation, Concordia Seminary in Exile, 1977.

Rude, Terry. "God's Answer to a Complaining Sufferer." Biblical Viewpoint 21:2 (November 1987):37-41.

Sarles, Ken L. "A Theological Evaluation of the Prosperity Gospel." Bibliotheca Sacra 143:572 (October-December 1986):329-52.

Sarna, Nahum M. "Epic Substratum in the Prose of Job." Journal of Biblical Literature 76 (1957):13-25.

Sauer, Alfred von Rohr. "Salvation by Grace: The Heart of Job's Theology." Concordia Theological Monthly 37 (May 1966):259-70.

Sawyer, J. F. A. "The Authorship and Structure of the Book of Job." Studia Biblica 1 (1983):253-57.

Scholnick, Sylvia Huberman. "Lawsuit Drama in the Book of Job." Ph.D. dissertation, Brandeis University, 1975.

_____. "The Meaning of Mispat in the Book of Job." Journal of Biblical Literature 101 (1982):521-29.

Seitz, Christopher R. "Job: Full-Structure, Movement, and Interpretation." Interpretation 43:1 (January 1989):5-17.

Smick, Elmer B. "Another Look at the Mythological Elements in the Book of Job." Westminster Theological Journal 40 (1978):213-28.

_____. "Architectonics, Structured Poems, and Rhetorical Devices in the Book of Job." In A Tribute to Gleason Archer. pp. 87-104. Edited by Walter C. Kaiser Jr. and Ronald F. Youngblood. Chicago: Moody Press, 1986.

_____. "Job." In 1 Kings-Job. Vol. 4 of The Expositor's Bible Commentary. 12 vols. Edited by Frank E. Gaebelein and Richard D. Polcyn. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1988.

_____. "Mythology and the Book of Job." Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 13 (Spring 1970):101-8.

Staples, William Ewart. The Speeches of Elihu: A Study of Job XXXII-XXXVII. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1924.

Tsevat, Matitiahu. "The Meaning of the Book of Job." Hebrew Union College Annual 37 (1966):73-106.

Von Rad, Gerhard. Wisdom in Israel. New York: Abingdon, 1972.

Waters, Larry J. "The Authenticity of the Elihu Speeches in Job 32-37." Bibliotheca Sacra 156:621 (January-March 1999):28-41.

_____. "Elihu's Theology and His View of Suffering." Bibliotheca Sacra 156:622 (April-June 1999):143-59.

_____. "Reflections on Suffering from the Book of Job." Bibliotheca Sacra 154:616 (October-December 1997):436-51.

Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language. College ed. New York: World Publishing Co., 1953.

Westermann, Claus. The Structure of the Book of Job: A Form-Critical Analysis. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981.

Wevers, John W. The Way of the Righteous. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1961.

Yancey, Philip. "When the Facts Don't Add Up." Christianity Today, June 13, 1986, pp. 19-22.

Yoder, Sanford Calvin. Poetry of the Old Testament. Scottdale, Pa: Herald Press, 1973.

Zink, James K. "Impatient Job." Journal of Biblical Literature 84:2 (June 1965):147-52.

Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible. S.v. "Uz," by G. Frederick Owen.

Zuck, Roy B. "Job." In The Bible Knowledge Commentary: Old Testament, pp. 715-77. Edited by John F. Walvoord and Roy B. Zuck. Wheaton: Scripture Press Publications, Victor Books, 1985.

_____. Job. Everyman's Bible Commentary series. Chicago: Moody Press, 1978.

_____. "A Theology of the Wisdom Books and the Song of Songs." In A Biblical Theology of the Old Testament, pp. 207-55. Edited by Roy B. Zuck. Chicago: Moody Press, 1991.

Copyright 2003 by Thomas L. Constable

Haydock: Job (Book Introduction)

THE BOOK OF JOB.

INTRODUCTION.

This Book takes its name from the holy man, of whom it treats; who, according to the more probable opinion, was of the race of Esau, and the same as Jobab, king of Edom, mentioned [in] Genesis xxxvi. 33. It is uncertain who was the writer of it. Some attribute it to Job himself; others to Moses, or some one of the prophets. In the Hebrew it is written in verse, from the beginning of the third chapter to the forty-second chapter. (Challoner) --- The beginning and conclusion are historical, and in prose. Some have divided this work into a kind of tragedy, the first act extending to chap. xv., the second to chap. xxii., the third to chap. xxxviii., where God appears, and the plot is unfolded. They suppose that the sentiments of the speakers are expressed, though not their own words. This may be very probable: but the opinion of those who look upon the work as a mere allegory, must be rejected with horror. The sacred writers speak of Job as of a personage who had really existed, (Calmet) and set the most noble pattern of virtue, and particularly of patience, Tobias ii. 12., Ezechiel xiv. 14., and James v. 11. Philo and Josephus pass over this history, as they do those of Tobias, Judith, &c. (Haydock) --- The time when Job lived is not clearly ascertained. Some have supposed (Calmet) that he was a contemporary with Esther; (Du Hamel; Thalmud) on which supposition, the work is here placed in its chronological order. But Job more probably live during the period when the Hebrews groaned under the Egyptian bondage, (Haydock) or sojourned in the wilderness, Numbers xiv. 9. The Syrians place the book at the head of the Scriptures. (Calmet) --- Its situation has often varied, and is of no great importance. The subject which is here treated, is of far more; as it is intended to shew that the wicked sometimes prosper, while the good are afflicted. (Haydock) --- This had seldom been witnessed before the days of Abraham: but as God had now selected his family to be witnesses and guardians of religion, a new order of things was beginning to appear. This greatly perplexed Job himself; who, therefore, confesses that he had not sufficiently understood the ways of God, till he had deigned to explain them in the parable of the two great beasts, chap. xlii. 3. We cannot condemn the sentiments expressed by Job, since God has declared that they were right, chap. xlii. 8) and reprimands Elihu, (chap. xxxviii. 2.) and the other three friends of Job, for maintaining a false opinion, though, from the history of past times, they had judge it to be true. This remark may excupate them from the stain of wilful lying, and vain declamation. (Houbigant) --- However, as they assert what was false, their words of themselves are of no authority; and they are even considered as the forerunners of heretics. (St. Gregory; St. Augustine, &c.) (Tirinus) --- Job refutes them by sound logic. (St. Jerome) --- We may discover in this book the sum of Christian morality, (Worthington) for which purpose it has been chiefly explained by St. Gregory. The style is very poetical, (Haydock) though at the same time simple, like that of Moses. (Du Hamel) --- It is interspersed with many Arabic and Chaldaic idioms; (St. Jerome) whence some have concluded, that it was written originally by Job and his friends (Haydock) in Arabic, and translated into Hebrew by Moses, for the consolation of his brethren. (Worthington) --- The Hebrew text is in many places incorrect; (Houbigant) and the Septuagint seem to have omitted several verses. (Origen) --- St. Jerome says almost eight hundred, (Calmet) each consisting of about six words. (Haydock) --- Shultens, in 1747, expressed his dissatisfaction with the labours of all preceding commentators. To explain this book may not therefore be an easy task: but we must be as short as possible. (Haydock) --- Those who desire farther information, may consult Pineda, (Worthington) whose voluminous work, in two folios, will nearly (Haydock) give all necessary information. (Calmet)

Gill: Job (Book Introduction)

INTRODUCTION TO JOB

This book, in the Hebrew copies, generally goes by this name, from Job, who is however the subject, if not the writer of it. In the Vulgate Latin version it is called "the Book of Job"; in the Syriac version, the Writing of Job; and in the Arabic, the Writing or Book of Job the Just. In some Hebrew Bibles it stands between the Book of Proverbs and the Song of Solomon; but, according to the Talmudists ^a, it should stand between the Psalms of David and the Proverbs of Solomon. Some have made a question of it, whether there ever was such a man as Job, and suppose this book not to be a real history, or to contain matters of fact, but to be written under fictitious names, and to be parabolical, and that it is designed to set forth an example of patience in suffering affliction; and some of the Jewish writers ^b affirm, that Job never was in being, and that this book is a parable, apologue, or fable; and to this Maimonides ^c himself inclines; but this opinion is justly rejected by Aben Ezra, Peritsol, and others; for that there was such a man is as certain as that there were such men as Noah and Daniel, with whom he is mentioned by the Prophet Ezekiel, Eze 14:14 and the testimony of the Apostle James is full to this purpose, who speaks of him as a person well known, and not to be doubted of; of whom, and of whose patience, the Jews he writes to had heard much, Jam 5:11 besides, the names of the countries where he and his friends lived, the account given of his family, and of his substance, both before and after his afflictions, show it to be a real history. Learned men are not agreed about the signification of his name; according to Jerom ^d, it signifies a magician, taking it to be the same with אוב, "ob": and some Jewish writers ^e place him with Balaam and Jethro, as the counsellors of Pharaoh against the Israelites, for which he was afflicted: the same ancient fathers render the word grieving and howling; others, as Spanheim ^f, derive it from יאב, to "love" or "desire", and so it signifies desire or delight, and is the same with Desiderius or Erasmus; hence Job is called by Suidas ^g τριποθητος, exceeding desirable; but Hillerus ^h, deriving it from the same root, makes it to signify just the reverse, "without desire"; or not desirable; and supposes it to be a compound of יאוב, "desire", and איב, "not"; but the generality of writers derive it from איב, "to be at enmity", and so it signifies one that is exposed to the hatred and enmity of men, or one that is a hater and enemy of wicked men; or, as Schmidtt ⁱ interprets it, a man zealous for God, and showing hatred to wickedness and wicked men on his account. Who Job was, it is not easy to say; not the same with Jobab, of the race of Esau, as some, Gen 36:33. Aristeas ^k says he was a son of Esau himself, by his wife Bessare, and was first called Jobam; nor the same with Job a son of Issachar, Gen 46:13, nor was he a descendant of Abraham by Keturah; but rather sprung from Uz, the firstborn of Nahor, brother of Abraham, Gen 22:21, who gave name to the country where Job lived, as Buz his brother did to that of which Elihu was, and as Chesed, another brother of Uz, did to the Chasdim or Chaldeans, who were both near to Job. It is also not agreed in what time Job lived; Maimonides ^l says, of their writers some place him in the times of the patriarchs, some in the times of Moses, others in the times of David, and others say that he was of the wise men of Babylon; and some add, that he was of them that came out of the captivity there, and had a school at Tiberias, as say the Talmudists ^m who give very different accounts of him: some say he was in the times of the judges; others in the times of the queen of Sheba; and others in the times of Ahasuerus; but the more general opinion is, and indeed the more probable, that he was born when the Israelites went down into Egypt, and that he was dead when they came from thence ⁿ: in short, they place him almost in all the ages from Abraham to the Babylonish captivity, and after it; and even Luther ^o was of opinion that he lived in the times of Solomon, for which there is no more reason than for the rest: it seems most probable that he lived before Moses ^p, at least before the giving of the law to him, since no mention is made of it in this book, nor any reference to it; whereas there is to things more ancient, as the general deluge, the burning of Sodom, &c. the law concerning sacrifices only to be offered by priests was not as yet given; for Job offered sacrifices as being the head of his family, and so did his three friends, Job 1:5. The length of his life best agrees with the times before Moses, for in his time the age of man was reduced to seventy years; whereas Job must live two hundred years or more, since he lived one hundred and forty after his restoration: add to this, that this book seems to have been written before any idolatry was in the world but the worship of the sun and moon, Job 31:25 and before there were any writings divinely inspired, since there is no appeal to any in the whole controversy between Job and his friends; but the appeal is made to men of years and wisdom, and to traditions of former times, Job 5:1. According to Dr. Owen ^q Job lived three hundred and fifty years after the dispersion at Babel, about A. M. 2100. It is also greatly controverted who was the writer of this book; some ascribe the writing of it to Isaiah the prophet; others to Solomon, as Luther ^r; others to one of the prophets who was an Idumaean; but most to Moses, so the Jews ^s say, that he wrote his own book, the section of Balaam, and Job. Some think that he wrote it when in Midian, for the comfort and encouragement of the Hebrews afflicted in Egypt at that time, and who might hope to be delivered out of their afflictions, as this good man was delivered out of his; and this, it is supposed, accounts for the use of many Arabic words in it; Midian being in Arabia, where Moses, having lived some years, had mixed their language with his own. Some are of opinion that he met with this book when in those parts, which he found either in the Arabic or Syriac language, and translated it into Hebrew ^t for the use of the Israelites; and others think it was written by Job's friends, and particularly by Elihu, which is concluded from Job 32:15, but it is most probable that it was written by Job himself, or at least compiled from his diary or "adversaria" kept by him, or from those of his friends, or from both, and that it was written in the language it is now in: but be it written by whom it may, there is no doubt to be made of the divine authority of it; as appears from the sublimity of the style, the subject matter of it, its agreement with other parts of the sacred writings, and particularly from a quotation of a passage out of Job 5:13 by the Apostle Paul, 1Co 3:19 see also Job 5:17, compared with Heb 12:5. The design of it is not only in general to assert and explain the doctrine of Providence, as Maimonides observes; but in particular to show, that, though good men are afflicted, yet sooner or later they are delivered out of their afflictions; and that it becomes them to bear them patiently, and not murmur at them; nor complain of God on account of them, whose ways and works are unsearchable, and who gives no account of his matters to men, but is sovereign, wise, and just, in all he does; and whatsoever is done by him issues in the good of his people, as well as in his own glory, as the event shows. This book may be considered either as an history of the life of Job, in which an account is given of him in his prosperity; of his afflictions, and how they came upon him; of a visit paid him by his friends, and of the discourses that pass between him and them, and of his restoration to greater affluence than he enjoyed before: or as a drama or dialogue consisting of divers parts, and in which various speakers are introduced, as God, Satan, Job, his wife, and friends; or as a dispute, in which Job's three friends are the opponents, himself the respondent, Elihu the moderator, and God the umpire, who settled and determined the point in question. It contains many useful things in it concerning the Divine Being, and the perfections of his nature, his wisdom, power, justice, goodness, and sovereignty; concerning the works of creation and providence; concerning original sin, and the corruption of mankind; concerning redemption by Christ, and good works to be done by men; and concerning the resurrection of the dead, and eternal life. Some think Job was a type of Christ in his afflictions and sufferings; in his patience under them, and deliverance out of them; in his exaltation to an high pitch of happiness and prosperity; and in his intercession for his friends. He is in many things worthy of imitation, though in others to be blamed, and not followed; and, on the whole, this book of his may be read with great pleasure and profit.

Gill: Job 3 (Chapter Introduction)

INTRODUCTION TO JOB 3

In this chapter we have an account of Job's cursing the day of his birth, and the night of his conception; Job 3:1; first the day, to which he wishes the most extreme darkness, Job 3:4; then the night, to which he wishes the same and that it might be destitute of all joy, and be cursed by others as well as by himself, Job 3:6; The reasons follow, because it did not prevent his coming into the world, and because he died not on it, Job 3:10; which would, as he judged, have been an happiness to him; and this he illustrates by the still and quiet state of the dead, the company they are with, and their freedom from all trouble, oppression, and bondage, Job 3:13; but however, since it was otherwise with him, he desires his life might not be prolonged, and expostulates about the continuance of it, Job 3:20; and this by reason of his present troubles, which were many and great, and came upon him as he feared they would, and which had made him uneasy in his prosperity, Job 3:24.