Job 3:11

Job Wishes He Had Died at Birth ¹ 

3:11 “Why did I not ²  die ³  at birth, ⁴ 

and why did I not expire

as ⁵  I came out of the womb?

Job 10:18

An Appeal for Relief

10:18 “Why then did you bring me out from the womb?

I should have died ⁶ 

and no eye would have seen me!

Job 11:20

11:20 But the eyes of the wicked fail, ⁷ 

and escape ⁸  eludes them;

their one hope ⁹  is to breathe their last.” ¹⁰ 

Job 17:13-16

17:13 If ¹¹  I hope for the grave to be my home,

if I spread out my bed in darkness,

17:14 If I cry ¹²  to corruption, ¹³  ‘You are my father,’

and to the worm, ‘My Mother,’ or ‘My sister,’

17:15 where then ¹⁴  is my hope?

And my hope, ¹⁵  who sees it?

17:16 Will ¹⁶  it ¹⁷  go down to the barred gates ¹⁸  of death?

Will ¹⁹  we descend ²⁰  together into the dust?”

Genesis 49:33

49:33 When Jacob finished giving these instructions to his sons, he pulled his feet up onto the bed, breathed his last breath, and went ²¹  to his people.

Matthew 27:50

27:50 Then Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and gave up his spirit.

Acts 5:10

5:10 At once ²²  she collapsed at his feet and died. So when the young men came in, they found her dead, and they carried her out and buried her beside her husband.

[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.

[3:11]  ² tn The negative only occurs with the first clause, but it extends its influence to the parallel second clause (GKC 483 §152.z).

[3:11]  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.

[3:11]  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.

[3:11]  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.”

[10:18]  ⁶ tn The two imperfect verbs in this section are used to stress regrets for something which did not happen (see GKC 317 §107.n).

[11:20]  ⁷ tn The verb כָּלָה (kalah) means “to fail, cease, fade away.” The fading of the eyes, i.e., loss of sight, loss of life’s vitality, indicates imminent death.

[11:20]  ⁸ tn Heb a “place of escape” (with this noun pattern). There is no place to escape to because they all perish.

[11:20]  ⁹ tn The word is to be interpreted as a metonymy; it represents what is hoped for.

[11:20]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “the breathing out of the soul”; cf. KJV, ASV “the giving up of the ghost.” The line is simply saying that the brightest hope that the wicked have is death.

[17:13]  ¹¹ tn The clause begins with אִם (’im) which here has more of the sense of “since.” E. Dhorme (Job, 253) takes a rather rare use of the word to get “Can I hope again” (see also GKC 475 §150.f for the caveat).

[17:14]  ¹² tn This is understood because the conditional clauses seem to run to the apodosis in v. 15.

[17:14]  ¹³ tn The word שַׁחַת (shakhat) may be the word “corruption” from a root שָׁחַת (shakhat, “to destroy”) or a word “pit” from שׁוּחַ (shuakh, “to sink down”). The same problem surfaces in Ps 16:10, where it is parallel to “Sheol.” E. F. Sutcliffe, The Old Testament and the Future Life, 76ff., defends the meaning “corruption.” But many commentators here take it to mean “the grave” in harmony with “Sheol.” But in this verse “worms” would suggest “corruption” is better.

[17:15]  ¹⁴ tn The adverb אֵפוֹ (’efo, “then”) plays an enclitic role here (see Job 4:7).

[17:15]  ¹⁵ tn The repetition of “my hope” in the verse has thrown the versions off, and their translations have led commentators also to change the second one to something like “goodness,” on the assumption that a word cannot be repeated in the same verse. The word actually carries two different senses here. The first would be the basic meaning “hope,” but the second a metonymy of cause, namely, what hope produces, what will be seen.

[17:16]  ¹⁶ sn It is natural to assume that this verse continues the interrogative clause of the preceding verse.

[17:16]  ¹⁷ tn The plural form of the verb probably refers to the two words, or the two senses of the word in the preceding verse. Hope and what it produces will perish with Job.

[17:16]  ¹⁸ tn The Hebrew word בַּדִּים (baddim) describes the “bars” or “bolts” of Sheol, referring (by synecdoche) to the “gates of Sheol.” The LXX has “with me to Sheol,” and many adopt that as “by my side.”

[17:16]  ¹⁹ tn The conjunction אִם (’im) confirms the interrogative interpretation.

[17:16]  ²⁰ tn The translation follows the LXX and the Syriac versions with the change of vocalization in the MT. The MT has the noun “rest,” yielding, “will our rest be together in the dust?” The verb נָחַת (nakhat) in Aramaic means “to go down; to descend.” If that is the preferred reading – and it almost is universally accepted here – then it would be spelled נֵחַת (nekhat). In either case the point of the verse is clearly describing death and going to the grave.

[49:33]  ²¹ tn Heb “was gathered.”

[5:10]  ²² tn Grk “And at once.” Because of the difference between Greek style, which often begins sentences or clauses with “and,” and English style, which generally does not, καί (kai) has not been translated here.