Job 3:20-22

Longing for Death ¹ 

3:20 “Why does God ²  give ³  light to one who is in misery, ⁴ 

and life to those ⁵  whose soul is bitter,

3:21 to ⁶  those who wait ⁷  for death that ⁸  does not come,

and search for it ⁹ 

more than for hidden treasures,

3:22 who rejoice ¹⁰  even to jubilation, ¹¹ 

and are exultant ¹²  when ¹³  they find the grave? ¹⁴ 

Job 6:9

6:9 And that God would be willing ¹⁵  to crush me,

that he would let loose ¹⁶  his hand

and ¹⁷  kill me. ¹⁸ 

Job 10:1

An Appeal for Revelation

10:1 “I ¹⁹  am weary ²⁰  of my life;

I will complain without restraint; ²¹ 

I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.

Genesis 27:46

27:46 Then Rebekah said to Isaac, “I am deeply depressed ²²  because of these daughters of Heth. ²³  If Jacob were to marry one of these daughters of Heth who live in this land, I would want to die!” ²⁴ 

Genesis 27:1

Jacob Cheats Esau out of the Blessing

27:1 When ²⁵  Isaac was old and his eyes were so weak that he was almost blind, ²⁶  he called his older ²⁷  son Esau and said to him, “My son!” “Here I am!” Esau ²⁸  replied.

Genesis 19:4

19:4 Before they could lie down to sleep, ²⁹  all the men – both young and old, from every part of the city of Sodom – surrounded the house. ³⁰ 

Jonah 4:3

4:3 So now, Lord, kill me instead, ³¹  because I would rather die than live!” ³² 

Jonah 4:8

4:8 When the sun began to shine, God sent ³³  a hot ³⁴  east wind. So the sun beat down ³⁵  on Jonah’s head, and he grew faint. So he despaired of life, ³⁶  and said, “I would rather die than live!” ³⁷ 

[3:20]  ¹ sn Since he has survived birth, Job wonders why he could not have died a premature death. He wonders why God gives light and life to those who are in misery. His own condition throws gloom over life, and so he poses the question first generally, for many would prefer death to misery (20-22); then he comes to the individual, himself, who would prefer death (23). He closes his initial complaint with some depictions of his suffering that afflicts him and gives him no rest (24-26).

[3:20]  ² tn Heb “he”; the referent (God) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[3:20]  ³ tn The verb is the simple imperfect, expressing the progressive imperfect nuance. But there is no formal subject to the verb, prompting some translations to make it passive in view of the indefinite subject (so, e.g., NAB, NIV, NRSV). Such a passive could be taken as a so-called “divine passive” by which God is the implied agent. Job clearly means God here, but he stops short of naming him (see also the note on “God” earlier in this verse).

[3:20]  ⁴ sn In v. 10 the word was used to describe the labor and sorrow that comes from it; here the one in such misery is called the עָמֵל (’amel, “laborer, sufferer”).

[3:20]  ⁵ tn The second colon now refers to people in general because of the plural construct מָרֵי נָפֶשׁ (mare nafesh, “those bitter of soul/life”). One may recall the use of מָרָה (marah, “bitter”) by Naomi to describe her pained experience as a poor widow in Ruth 1:20, or the use of the word to describe the bitter oppression inflicted on Israel by the Egyptians (Exod 1:14). Those who are “bitter of soul” are those whose life is overwhelmed with painful experiences and suffering.

[3:21]  ⁶ tn The verse simply begins with the participle in apposition to the expressions in the previous verse describing those who are bitter. The preposition is added from the context.

[3:21]  ⁷ tn The verb is the Piel participle of חָכָה (khakhah, “to wait for” someone; Yahweh is the object in Isa 8:17; 64:3; Ps 33:20). Here death is the supreme hope of the miserable and the suffering.

[3:21]  ⁸ tn The verse simply has the form אֵין (’en, “there is not”) with a pronominal suffix and a conjunction – “and there is not it” or “and it is not.” The LXX and the Vulgate add a verb to explain this form: “and obtain it not.”

[3:21]  ⁹ tn The parallel verb is now a preterite with a vav (ו) consecutive; it therefore has the nuance of a characteristic perfect or gnomic perfect – the English present tense.

[3:22]  ¹⁰ tn Here too the form is the participle in apposition “to him who is in misery” in v. 20. It continues the description of those who are destitute and would be delighted to die.

[3:22]  ¹¹ tn The Syriac has “and gather themselves together,” possibly reading גִּיל (gil, “rejoicing”) as גַּל (gal, “heap”). Some have tried to emend the text to make the word mean “heap” or “mound,” as in a funerary mound. While one could argue for a heap of stones as a funerary mound, the passage has already spoken of digging a grave, which would be quite different. And while such a change would make a neater parallelism in the verse, there is no reason to force such; the idea of “jubilation” fits the tenor of the whole verse easily enough and there is no reason to change it. A similar expression is found in Hos 9:1, which says, “rejoice not, O Israel, with jubilation.” Here the idea then is that these sufferers would rejoice “to the point of jubilation” at death.

[3:22]  ¹² tn This sentence also parallels an imperfect verb with the substantival participle of the first colon. It is translated as an English present tense.

[3:22]  ¹³ tn The particle could be “when” or “because” in this verse.

[3:22]  ¹⁴ sn The expression “when they find a grave” means when they finally die. The verse describes the relief and rest that the sufferer will obtain when the long-awaited death is reached.

[6:9]  ¹⁵ tn The verb יָאַל (ya’al) in the Hiphil means “to be willing, to consent, to decide.” It is here the jussive followed by the dependent verb with a (ו) vav: “that God would be willing and would crush me” means “to crush me.” Gesenius, however, says that the conjunction introduces coordination rather than subordination; he says the principal idea is introduced in the second verb, the first verb containing the definition of the manner of the action (see GKC 386 §120.d).

[6:9]  ¹⁶ tn The verb is used for loosening shoe straps in Isa 58:6, and of setting prisoners free in Pss 105:20 and 146:7. Job thinks that God’s hand has been restrained for some reason, and so desires that God be free to destroy him.

[6:9]  ¹⁷ tn The final verb is an imperfect (or jussive) following the jussive (of נָתַר, natar); it thus expresses the result (“and then” or “so that”) or the purpose (“in order that”). Job longs for death, but it must come from God.

[6:9]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “and cut me off.” The LXX reads this verse as “Let the Lord begin and wound me, but let him not utterly destroy me.” E. Dhorme (Job, 81) says the LXX is a paraphrase based on a pun with “free hand.” Targum Job has, “God has begun to make me poor; may he free his hand and make me rich,” apparently basing the reading on a metaphorical interpretation.

[10:1]  ¹⁹ tn The Hebrew has נַפְשִׁי (nafshi), usually rendered “my soul.”

[10:1]  ²⁰ tn The verb is pointed like a Qal form but is originally a Niphal from קוּט (qut). Some wish to connect the word to Akkadian cognates for a meaning “I am in anguish”; but the meaning “I am weary” fits the passage well.

[10:1]  ²¹ tn The verb עָזַב (’azav) means “to abandon.” It may have an extended meaning of “to let go” or “to let slip.” But the expression “abandon to myself” means to abandon all restraint and give free course to the complaint.

[27:46]  ²² tn Heb “loathe my life.” The Hebrew verb translated “loathe” refers to strong disgust (see Lev 20:23).

[27:46]  ²³ tn Some translate the Hebrew term “Heth” as “Hittites” here (see also Gen 23:3), but this gives the impression that these people were the classical Hittites of Anatolia. However, there is no known connection between these sons of Heth, apparently a Canaanite group (see Gen 10:15), and the Hittites of Asia Minor. See H. A. Hoffner, Jr., “Hittites,” Peoples of the Old Testament World, 152-53.

[27:46]  ²⁴ tn Heb “If Jacob takes a wife from the daughters of Heth, like these, from the daughters of the land, why to me life?”

[27:1]  ²⁵ tn The clause begins with the temporal indicator (“and it happened”), making it subordinate to the main clause that follows later in the sentence.

[27:1]  ²⁶ tn Heb “and his eyes were weak from seeing.”

[27:1]  ²⁷ tn Heb “greater” (in terms of age).

[27:1]  ²⁸ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Esau) is specified in the translation for clarity.

[19:4]  ²⁹ tn The verb שָׁכַב (shakhav) means “to lie down, to recline,” that is, “to go to bed.” Here what appears to be an imperfect is a preterite after the adverb טֶרֶם (terem). The nuance of potential (perfect) fits well.

[19:4]  ³⁰ tn Heb “and the men of the city, the men of Sodom, surrounded the house, from the young to the old, all the people from the end [of the city].” The repetition of the phrase “men of” stresses all kinds of men.

[4:3]  ³¹ tn Heb “take my life from me.”

[4:3]  ³² tn Heb “better my death than my life.”

[4:8]  ³³ tn Or “appointed.” See preceding note on v. 7.

[4:8]  ³⁴ tc The MT adjective חֲרִישִׁית (kharishit, “autumnal”) is a hapax legomenon with an unclear meaning (BDB 362 s.v. חֲרִישִׁי); therefore, the BHS editors propose a conjectural emendation to the adjective חֲרִיפִית (kharifit, “autumnal”) from the noun חֹרֶף (khoref, “autumn”; see BDB 358 s.v. חרֶף). However, this emendation would also create a hapax legomenon and it would be no more clear than relating the MT’s חֲרִישִׁית to I חָרַשׁ (kharash, “to plough” [in autumn harvest]).

[4:8]  ³⁵ tn Heb “attacked” or “smote.”

[4:8]  ³⁶ tn Heb “he asked his soul to die.”

[4:8]  ³⁷ tn Heb “better my death than my life.”