After this Job opened his mouth, and cursed the day of his birth.
Job answered:
“Let the day perish in which I was born, the night which said, ‘There is a boy conceived.’
Let that day be darkness. Don’t let God from above seek for it, neither let the light shine on it.
Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it for their own. Let a cloud dwell on it. Let all that makes black the day terrify it.
As for that night, let thick darkness seize on it. Let it not rejoice among the days of the year. Let it not come into the number of the months.
Behold, let that night be barren. Let no joyful voice come therein.
Let them curse it who curse the day, who are ready to rouse up leviathan.
Let the stars of its twilight be dark. Let it look for light, but have none, neither let it see the eyelids of the morning,
because it didn’t shut up the doors of my mother’s womb, nor did it hide trouble from my eyes.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9 The seven days ended, Job 2:13.
The seven days ended, Job 2:13.
Here Job beginneth to feel his great imperfection in this battle between the spirit and the flesh, Rom. 7:18, and after a manner yieldeth, yet in the end he getteth victory, though he was in the mean time greatly wounded.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–10 Job 3:1 After this opened Job his mouth, and…
Job 3:1 After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day.
Ver. 1. After this] After so long silence of his friends, and to provoke them to speak, who haply waited for some words from him first, as knowing him wise and well spoken. Or [After this] After that Job’s pains were somewhat allayed, so that he could breathe, recollect himself, and utter his mind; for some troubles are above speech, Psa 77:4, they will hardly suffer a man to take breath, Job 9:18, {See Trapp on "Est 4:14"} or to hear anything, though never so wholesome or comfortable, Exo 6:9.
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Job opened his mouth] But better he had kept it closed still: either be silent, saith the Greek proverb, or else say something that is better than silence. But it may befall the best, left to themselves, to speak unadvisedly with their lips, as meek Moses did at the waters of Meribah, for which sin of his, some Jews say that he was damned, because we read not of his repentance. And a like wretched censure they pass upon holy Job for his cursing his day here, saying, that although in words he cursed the creature only, yet interpretatively and indeed, he cursed the Creator; like as he that spitteth upon a king’s picture, or robe royal, doth the same to the king himself. But why do they not then say the same of Jeremiah, and pronounce him a reprobate for cursing his birthday too? Jer 20:14. R. Levi answereth, because it appeareth to be otherwise by Jeremiah’s whole prophecy besides. And may we not say the like for Job, if we wisely weigh his words in their right sense, and the end which the Lord made, Jas 5:11, propounding him for a pattern of patience, not of impatience, whereof nothing is said against him, though he had his outbursts, as here; and must have his allowance (as good gold hath when it comes to the scale) that so he may pass. If he had blasphemed God, or denied his providence, ascribing all events to the conjunction of the stars at a man’s birth (as the Talmudists falsely gather from this chapter), Satan had had his design upon him; and God would never have justified him, and preferred him before his friends, as he did, Job 42:7-8 True it is, that, Job 38:2, when he had spoken his mind overly freely, and indeed sinfully (as there is not a man upon earth that liveth, and sinneth not), as if the Lord had dealt unkindly, if not unequally, with him, God in the end steppeth forth, as it were, from behind the hangings, overhearing him, and taking him up, Who is this, saith he there, that talketh thus? how now? After which Job was not only hushed, Job 40:4-5, but humbled, Job 42:6. And truly it should be considered, say both Ambrose and Chrysostom, in Job’s defence, that, though patient in the two former chapters, yet now he begins to be wet to the skin; yea, the drops of God’s wrath began to soak into his soul; the devil also set upon him with all violence, as some conceive from the next verse, Job answered and said, sc. to some dispute with the devil. Now, therefore, that he thus falleth a roaring and a cursing his day, it is, saith Chrysostom, as a sick man, who, being under the physician’s hands, of whom he is well persuaded, useth all patience towards him; but, being in extremity of pain, lays about him, and strikes at the bystanders, &c. Exemplo Iobi liquet, it is evident from the example of Job saith another good writer; by this example of Job it appeareth, that in extreme trials of the best it oft happens that pain and grief speaketh rather than the man himself, and that in the sieve of temptations, upon a more violent sifting, the holes being worn or widened, not the offal only, but some grains of good wheat, that is, of faith, do slip through; which yet the right hand of a gracious God is wont to gather, and to lay up in the granary of his grace (Bucholc.). Job cannot altogether be excused, saith Fetus upon this chapter, neither is he said, as before, not to have sinned in these following expressions. Rather is it to be held, that the Lord, who before stood by him, now for a time left him, to try what is in man, even the best man living, if he be not strengthened by God continually. David was most courageous when he went against Goliath, but fearful when Saul pursued him. Elijah was most zealous for the Lord of hosts when he slew 450 of Baal’s priests: Tantus tamen fulminator ad Iezabelis minas trepidat, factus seipso imbecillior, saith one; and yet this valiant prophet flees at the threats of Jezebel, and heareth from heaven, "What doest thou here, Elijah?" So Jeremiah, Peter, Father Latimer, Pray for me, saith he, I say, pray for me; for I am sometimes so fearful that I would creep into a mouse hole; sometimes God doth visit me again with his comforts; so he cometh and goeth, to teach me to feel and know mine infirmity. Thus he writeth to Bishop Ridley, with whom he afterwards suffered at the same stake. His last words were, Fidelis est Deus, &c., God is faithful, who will not suffer us to be tempted above that we are able, &c. This was also Job’s comfort, when himself, doubtless; for at this time it was Ego non sum Ego I am not I, with him, and God considered it; for he knoweth our mould, he remembereth we are but dust.
And cursed his day] Diem, non Deum; his day, and not his God, as the devil would have had it. It was too much howsoever of that; and Job should have opened his mouth to better purpose. In the Revelation, whensoever heaven opened, some memorable matter followed; when wisdom openeth her mouth, she speaketh excellent things, Pro 8:6. When Asaph opened his mouth, he spake parables, Psa 78:2. When our Saviour did so, he delivered that famous Sermon on the Mount, Mat 5:2. But Job, alas, in the extreme pain of his body, and anguish of his soul, openeth his mouth, and curseth bitterly; curseth his day in a most emphatical manner, and in most exquisite terms, wishing all the evil to it that it was any way capable of. Now the day that he here curseth, is either the day wherein he suffered such a world of evils, as Oba 1:12 Isa 2:12, or rather the day which gave occasion to his sufferings, his birthday, as Job 3:3. Jeremiah did the like by a like infirmity, Job 20:14, and some others; but never hath any yet been heard to curse the day of his new birth, nor ever shall as whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, that by these we might be partakers of the Divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust: and besides an entrance ministered unto us further and further into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, 2Pe 1:4; 2Pe 1:11. There is a μυριομακαριοτης, a multiplied happiness in holiness.
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Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 He spake freely and boldly, as this phrase is…
He spake freely and boldly, as this phrase is used, Pro 31:8,9; Eph 6:19, and elsewhere,
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.
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Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v1 Long was Job's heart hot within him; and, while…
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.
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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's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1–10 After this opened Job his mouth,.... order to speak,…
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.
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(s) "Opponitur verbum" "verbo" "significat se pronunciasse diem inglorium", Codurcus.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 We have here Job cursing his birth day, and…
We have here Job cursing his birth day, and complaining that he was born, ver. 1-10. Complaining that he did not die as soon as he was born, ver. 11-19. Complaining that his life was continued, now he was in misery, ver. 20-26.
His day - 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, chap. xxxviii, 2; xl, 4; xiii, 3, 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.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 Job curses the day of his birth, and regrets…
CHAPTER III
Job curses the day of his birth, and regrets that he ever saw
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the light, 1-12.
Describes the empire of death and its inhabitants, 13-19.
Regrets that he is appointed to live in the midst of sorrows,
for the calamities which he feared had overtaken him, 20-26.
NOTES ON CHAP. III
Verse 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, c. 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.
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.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 Job 3:1. After this Job opened his mouth —…
Job 3:1. After this Job opened his mouth — The days of mourning being now over, and no hopes appearing of Job’s amendment, but his afflictions rather increasing, he bursts into a severe lamentation; he wishes he had never existed, or that his death had immediately followed his birth; life under such a load of calamity appearing to him the greatest affliction. Undoubtedly Satan, who had been permitted to bring the fore-mentioned calamities upon him, and to torment his body so dreadfully, had also obtained liberty to assault his mind with various and powerful temptations. This he now does with the utmost violence, injecting hard thoughts of God, as being severe, unjust, and his enemy; that he might shake his confidence and hope, and produce that horror and dismay, which might issue in his cursing God. For, as is justly observed by Mr. Scott, unless we bring these inward trials into the account, during which we may conclude that he was deprived of all comfortable sense of God’s favour, and filled with a dread of his wrath, we shall not readily apprehend the reason of the change that took place in his conduct, from the entire resignation manifested in the preceding chapters, to the impatience which appears here, and in some of the subsequent parts of this book. But this consideration solves the difficulty: the inward conflict and anguish of his mind, added to all his outward sufferings, caused the remaining corruption of his nature to work so powerfully, that at length it burst forth in many improper expressions. And cursed his day — His birth-day, as is evident from Job 3:3. In vain do some endeavour to excuse this and the following speeches of Job, who afterward is reproved by God, and severely accuses himself for them, Job 38:2; Job 40:4; Job 42:3; Job 42:6. And yet he does not proceed so far as to curse God, and therefore 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 what was not capable of receiving blessing or cursing, and because it reflected blame on God for bringing that day into existence, and for giving him life on that day. Some other pious persons, through a similar infirmity, when immersed in deep troubles, have vented their grief in the same unjustifiable way. See Jer 20:14.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv1–10 After this - Dr. Good renders this, “at length.”…
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.”
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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.”
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv1, 7, 8, 10 Cursed his day. Job cursed the day of his…
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)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v1 Job 3-28
FIRST CHIEF DIVISION OF THE POEM
THE ENTANGLEMENT—OR THE CONTROVERSIAL DISCOURSES OF JOB AND HIS FRIENDS
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Job 3-28
The Outbreak of Job’s Despair as the Theme and Immediate Occasion of the Colloquy
Job 3
a. Job curses his existence
Job_3:1-10
1 After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day. 2And Job spake, and said,
3 Let the day perish wherein I was born,
and the night in which it was said, There is a man-child conceived!
4 Let that day be darkness;
let not God regard it from above,
neither let the light shine upon it!
5 Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it;
let a cloud dwell upon it;
let the blackness of the day terrify it!
6 As for that night, let darkness seize upon it;
let it not be joined unto the days of the year,
let it not come into the number of the months!
7 Lo, let that night be solitary;
let no joyful voice come therein!
8 Let them curse it that curse the day,
who are ready to raise up their mourning!
9 Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark;
let it look for light but have none;
neither let it see the dawning of the day!
10 —because it shut not up the doors of my mother’s womb,
nor hid sorrow from mine eyes.
b. He wishes that he were in the realm of the dead rather than in this life
Job_3:11-19
11 Why died I not from the womb?
why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly?
12 Why did the knees prevent me?
or why the breasts that I should suck?
13 For now should I have lain still, and been quiet;
I should have slept, then had I been at rest,
14 With kings and counsellors of the earth,
which built desolate places for themselves;
15 or with princes that had gold,
who filled their houses with silver:
16 or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been,
as infants which never saw light.
17 There the wicked cease from troubling,
and there the weary be at rest.
18 There the prisoners rest together;
they hear not the voice of the oppressor.
19 The small and great are there;
and the servant is free from his master.
c. He asks why he, being weary of life, must still live
Job_3:20-26
20 Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery,
and life unto the bitter in soul;
21 which long for death, but it cometh not;
and dig for it more than for hid treasures;
22 which rejoice exceedingly,
and are glad, when they can find the grave?
23 Why is light given to a man whose way is hid,
and whom God hath hedged in?
24 For my sighing cometh before I eat,
and my roarings are poured out like the waters.
25 For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me,
and that which I was afraid of is come unto me.
26 I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet;
yet trouble came!
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1. The caption or prose introduction of Job’s out-gushing lamentation. Job_3:1-2.
Job_3:1. After this opened Job his mouth and cursed his day. [אַחֲרֵי־כֵן: after the appearance of the friends, their seven days’ silence, and after their conduct had wrought its full effect on the mind of Job.—E. “Opened his mouth; פָּתַח in conformity to the sensuous and poetic nature of Hebrew speech and thought, which uses the physical action to represent the mental.” Dav.]. “His day,” viz.: his birthday—the day on which he had come into the world. Comp. Job_1:4.
Job_3:2. And Job began and spake.—The verse consists only of these three words: אִיּוֹב וַיּאֹמַר וַיַּעַן. The literal meaning of וַיַּעַן is, “and he answered;” for עָנָה is, in general, to begin to speak when incited to it, whether the antecedent occasion consist of words or of actions; precisely the same as the New Testament ἀποκρίνεσθαι. [See Conant’s note in loco, proving that “in most of the cases quoted in support of the signification to speak up, to begin speaking (Ges. Lex. 2, and others), the reference to something prior, as the occasion of speaking, is clear, and in all of them there is ground for the writer’s choice of this form of expression.”] Here accordingly it is the persistent and expressive silence of the friends to which Job replies, not to any question, nor to any uttered remark of theirs.—וַיּאֹמַר, with Pattach in the final syllable, although the word is Milel, is found only in the prose captions of the discourses in our book; here, however, in every case: comp. Job_4:1; Job_6:1; Job_8:1, etc.—After these brief words of introduction, begins the poetic part of the book, distinguished by the poetic accentuation of the Masoretes. Comp. Introd. § 3. “From this point on the epic calmness with which the hero has suffered, and the poet told his story, yields to the pathos of the drama.” Dillmann. The contents of this first tragic, high-soaring, poetic discourse of Job are expressly given in the caption in Job_3:1 as being the cursing of the day of his own birth, an ardently expressed longing for death. Comp. Jeremiah’s abbreviated imitation in Job_20:14-18. [“There is a passage of Jeremiah so exactly similar that it might almost be imagined a direct imitation: the meaning is the same, nor is there any very great difference in the phraseology; but Jeremiah fills up the ellipses, smooths and harmonizes the rough and uncouth language of Job, and dilates a short distich into two equal distichs, consisting of somewhat longer verses.… The imprecation of Jeremiah has more in it of complaint than of indignation; it is milder, softer, and more plaintive, peculiarly calculated to excite pity, in moving which the great excellence of this prophet consists: while that of Job is more adapted to strike us with terror than to excite our compassion.” Lowth. And to the same effect Michaelis: Jobi est tragica illa et regia tristitia, dicam, an desperatio: Jeremiæ flebiles elegi, misericordiam provocantes, nec lacrimis major luctus.”] In respect of form, this mournful lamentation, which contains the theme and starting point of the following discussions, falls into three strophes of about equal length; Job_3:3-10; Job_3:11-19; and Job_3:20-26, of which the last alone gives evidence of a slight abridgement at the end, and that no doubt intentional, as the short, blunt breaking off of the second member of Job_3:26, which consists of only two words, וַיָּבֹא רגֶז, gives us to understand. That, with the majority of modern expositors, we are to adopt this three-fold division of the strophes, and not, with Stickel and Delitzsch, a greater number of divisions, longer or shorter, is made certain by the לָמָּה, which recurs at the beginning of the 2d and 3d strophes (comp. Introd. l. c.).
2. First Long Strophe: Job curses his existence; Job_3:3-10.—First strophe: Job_3:3-5.
Job_3:3. Perish the day wherein I was born.—יֹאבַד, with Pattahh in the last syllable, the accent having been retracted on account of the tone-syllable following (Ewald, § 139, b).—The elliptical relative clause, אִוָּלֶד בּוֹ, as also the like clause (אָמַר) in the following member, are to be explained by the excited, rapid movement of the poetic style. The Imperf. [alias Fut.], (instead of which the parallel passage in Jer_20:14 exhibits the Perf. [Præt.] יֻלַּדְתִּי), is the Imperf. of the Past, as is אָמוּת, Job_3:11. Comp. Ewald, § 136, b [who calls it the præsens præteriti, אִוָּלֵד = nascendus eram: and see Green, Gr. § 263, Job 5 : “the speaker, by a bold figure, places himself before his birth, and prays that the day which was to give him existence might be annihilated, so that he might be saved from the misery of living.”]—And the night which said: A man-child is conceived.—The night of Job’s conception is poetically personified, as a living being, endowed with the gift of speech (comp. Psa_19:3). It weakens the expression, and furthermore is by no means required by the masc. אמר (for לַיְלָה is masc.), to supply בַּאֲשֶׁר before אָמַר, “the night in which it was said” (Pesh., Vulg. [E. V.], etc.). In the deep excitement of feeling which now possesses him, all the objects of his thought become living powers, concrete, plastic forms. This is the case here with the night of his conception. For this is the night which is meant—not that of his birth, as the invariable usage of the verb הרה, “to be conceived,” shows. Had the second member been intended to be synonymous in thought and expression with the first, חולל would have been used, the usual synonym elsewhere in poetry of נולד. It is not only the language, however, which may be urged in favor of the literal construction of הֹרָה, but the general style of the discourse, which is characterized by poetic vividness and restless alternation. To this add that in what follows each of these two epochs of the life is made the object of a separate and vehement curse; to wit, first, in Job_3:4-5, the day of birth, and then, in Job_3:6-10, the night of conception. For this sharp and obviously intentional distinction between these two initial points of the life, comp. Psa_51:7. [גָבֶר, “not a man-child, Eng. Ver., but a man, the name proper to the mature state being applied by anticipation to the infant or embryo. The emphasis is not upon the sex, implying greater joy at the birth of a son than a daughter; Job says, ‘a man,’ because he is speaking of himself.” Green. Heb. Chrest.]
Job_3:4-5. A special curse of the day of birth: an expansion of Job_3:3 a.
Job_3:4. That day—let it be darkness.—Let it be a dies ater s. infaustus. Whether the thought particularly intended is, that at each annual return of the birth-day darkness, that is to say, stormy weather, should prevail instead of bright and clear weather (Hirz., Dillmann), may well be doubted in view of the indefinite brevity of the language. Moreover such a meteorological interpretation would have something trivial about it.—Let not God from above ask after it:i.e. let not God, who is throned on high above (Job_31:2; Job_31:28), interest himself in it from thence (comp. דרש in Deu_11:12), let him not bring it forth out of its dark hiding-place. [“Let it pass away as a thing lost and unsought.” Con.] And let not light shine forth upon it.—נְהָרָה, “radiance of light, brightness of day,” found only here; one of the many feminine forms of nouns peculiar to our book, such as עֲנָנָה, Job_3:5; כִּסְלָה, Job_4:6; תָּהֳלָה, Job_4:18; דִּבְרָה, Job_5:8 (Hirz.).
Job_3:5. Let darkness and death-shade reclaim it.—גָּאַל, to redeem, reclaim, to make good one’s right to (not=געל, to defile, Targ.), [“stain” E. V. The expression seems to refer back to Gen_1:2, which mentions the primeval darkness, out of which by the Divine Fiat the light, together with its product, the day, was evolved. That Darkness was thus the original proprietor of the days, and is here called on to reclaim Job’s birth-day. E. “The idea being that that day was a stray portion of the kingdom of death in the midst of light, and to be reclaimed again by death.” Dav.] The conceptions “darkness and death-shade” form a sort of hendiadys, signifying “the thickest darkness, the deepest death-gloom:” comp. Job_10:21; Job_34:22, etc.; also Luk_1:79 (צלמות is, with Ew. § 270 c, and with Dillm., to be read צַלְמוּת, and defined “black darkness”). Let clouds encamp above it: continually to hide it [עננה, collective: תשכו, to pitch one’s tent; fig. for settling or spreading]. Comp. יֹום עָנָןוַעֲרָפֶל. Joe_2:2.—Let the obscuration of the day terrify it: or literally “the obscurations of the day” [i.e. all that makes a day dark and dismal. E.]. Instead of the כִּמְרִירֵי י׳ of the Masora (to which reading Ges., Schlott., Hahn, adhere: [“the Chireq is an attenuated Pattach from the lessening of the tone in the construct state:” Con.]), we are to read כִּמְרִירֵי י׳, and take the sing. of this construct plural as a synonym of חַכְלִיל (“duskiness”), a noun of the same formal structure (comp. also שֵׁפְרִיר, “tapestry,” and other similar words of like structure in Ewald, § 157, a): [“with the third radical repeated, as is customary in words descriptive of color.” Dillmann]. The “darkening,” blackening of the day (כַּמְרִיר from the root כמר, “to be burnt, blackened”) is a result produced in a specially marked and striking manner by the eclipse of the sun; for which reason we are here to associate solar eclipses with the dark mass of clouds, thus intensifying the effect (Olsh., Dillm., Del., etc.). If we adhere to the Masoretic reading we should have to follow Aquila, the Targum, the Vulgate, in translating: terreant eum quasi amaritudines diei [Marg. of E. V.: “let them terrify it, as those who have a bitter day.” Hengst.: “May whatever is bitter to a day terrify it:” according to his explanation, Job would have retribution overtake that day; and as he himself had been filled with bitternesses, he would have the day from which all his sufferings took their origin, be afflicted with whatever might be bitter to it. E.]. But this instead of a strengthening, would be a weakening of the thought. Umbreit’s explanation: “let it be terrified as by incantations (comp. Arab. marîr, incantamentum), which darken the day,” anticipates that which is not expressed until further on, in Job_3:8, and is furthermore chargeable with being excessively artificial. [With Umbreit’s may be classified the rendering of Merx, who, reading כֹמְרֵי יֹום, translates: “May the priests of day frighten it away!” There can be little doubt that the rendering “darkenings of the day” is the one best suited to the context, and this whether with Ges., Con., etc., we retain the Masoretic Chiriq, or with Ewald, Zöckler, etc., change it to Pattach.—E.]
Second Strophe: Job_3:6-10. A special curse of the night of conception: an expansion of Job_3:3 b. The reason why this expansion is twice as long as that of Job_3:3 a, is found by Hirzel and Dillmann to lie in the fact that it was in particular the night of his conception which gave Job his existence (see Job_3:10). [“Twice as many verses, for it was twice as guilty, and the crime of his existence lay chiefly with it.” Dav.] This, however, would be attributing to the author altogether too much premeditation and systematic deliberation.
Job_3:6. That night—let thick darkness take it;i.e. let everlasting darkness seize on it and hold it fast as its possession, so that it can never come forth into the light of day. [“אֹפֶל, an intenser gloom than חשֶׁךְ, deepest primitive darkness, chaos and ‘old night.’ ” Dav.] Let it not rejoice among the days of the year.—אַל יִחַדְּ (for אַל יִחְדְּ, with an auxiliary Pattach [furtive]; comp. Ewald, § 224, c. [Green, § 109, 2], from חָדָה, gaudere (Exo_18:9), is evidently equivalent to: “let it not be glad of its existence among the days of the year.” [“The night is not considered so much to rejoice on account of its own beauty—fingitur pulchra nox de se ipsa gandere, Ges.—as to form one of the joyous and triumphant choral troop of nights, that come in harmonious and glittering procession.” Dav.] More insipid is the sense given by the reading followed by the Targum and Symmachus: אַל יֵחַד, “let it not be joined to the days of the year, let it not be enrolled among them,” Comp. Ges. 49:6. [So E. V., Ren., Merx]. [“Of course not natural days, as in Job_3:3-4, but civil days, embracing the entire diurnal period, in which sense they include the night.” Green. Chrest.] Let it not come into the number of the months:i.e. let it not be numbered among the days, the sum of which constitutes the twelve months of the year (LXX. correctly: μηδὲ ἀριθμηθείη εἰς ἡμέρας μηνῶν). Comp. Wieseler, Beiträge zur richtigen Würdigung der Evangelien und der evangel. Geschichte, Gotha, 1869, p. 291; which correctly finds here a reference to the fact that the ancient Hebrews reckoned according to the lunar year; i.e. by years of 354 days (consisting of twelve months, alternating in length between 30 and 29 days, and equalized with the solar year by an intercalary month of 30 days about every three years).
Job_3:7. Ha, that night!—let it be barren. גַּלְמוּד, lit. “stony hard,” here and also in Isa_49:21 (where it is used of [Zion, personified as] a woman), the same as “barren.” [“Sitting in the everlasting darkness, that Night remains barren. It utters no shout of joy over the children born to it.” Schlott. This sense is in better harmony with the etymology, and the vivid personification of the passage, as well as Job’s vindictive feeling over the fact that that night had conceived him, than the “solitary” of the Eng. Ver. (Vulg. “desolate,” Syr.—E.] Let no shout of joy come therein.—רְנָנָה, not “a song of the spheres” (Fries), [a conception and expression foreign to the Heb.: see the opposite thought, expressed Psa_19:3.—E.]; but a jubilant shout of joy over the birth (or conception) of a man.
Job_3:8. Let them curse it who curse days, they who are skilled to rouse up the dragon [leviathan]. [“He wishes everything dire and dreadful to be heaped upon it, or employed against it, not only all real evils, but even such as are imaginary and fictitious. He therefore invokes the aid of sorcerers, who curse the day, who claim the power of inflicting curses on it.” Green, Chrest.] אֹרְרֵי־יוֹם, “cursers of the day,” i.e. sorcerers, who, according to the superstition of the old oriental world, knew how by their ban to make dies infausti, and who, therefore, had the power so to bewitch any particular day as to make it a day of misfortune. This art of sorcery, the actual existence of which the poetic style of the discourse concedes and assumes without going further, is characterized still more particularly, and with vivid gradation in the language, by the following clause: “they who are skilled (capable, empowered) to rouse up (עֹרֵר in poetry for לְעֹרֵר, comp. Ewald § 285, c) leviathan,” i.e. the great dragon, who is the enemy of the sun and the moon, and seeks accordingly by swallowing them up to create darkness. That there is here an allusion to this well-known superstition in respect to solar and lunar eclipses, which is found among several other nationalities, e.g. the ancient inhabitants of India (see Bohlen, Das alte Indien, I. 290), the Chinese (Käuffer, Das chines. Volk, p. 123), the North-African natives of Algeria (comp. Delitzsch 1:79) appears: (1) From the connection, which forbids our taking לִוְיָתָן either as in 40:25 seq.; Psa_104:26, in its usual sense, of the crocodile, or again of terrestrial serpents (dragons), and so, with Umbreit and others, to think of snake-charmers or crocodile-tamers. (2) From the parallel passage in Job_26:13, where the mention of “the fleeing serpent” points to the same astronomical superstition. (3) From Isa_27:1, where the collocation of the words לִרֳתָן נָחָשׁ בָּרִיחַ designate the same mythical being (the dragon râhu or kêtu of the Hindûs). The poet accordingly in the passage before us gives to the curse that is to be pronounced on the day this highly poetic turn, by wishing that the sorcerers might secure the consummation of the curse by instigating the celestial dragon against the sun and moon, thus producing an eclipse of those bodies. To identify that dragon here (and in Job_26:13) with a constellation, by a reference to the dragon whose convolutions lie between the Great and Little Bear, or to any other serpent-figure among the stars (Hirz., Hahn, Schlott., etc.), does not harmonize well with the unmistakable meaning of עֹרֵר, “to excite, rouse up.” [The explanation of Umbreit, Rosenm., Noy., Bar., etc., a little more fully stated, is that “the verse probably refers to a class of persons who were supposed to have the power of making any day fortunate or unfortunate, to control future events, and even to call forth the most terrific monsters from impenetrable forests, or from the deep, for the gratification of their own malice, or that of others. Balaam, whom Balak sent for to curse Israel, affords evidence of the existence of a class of persons who were supposed to be capable of producing evil by their imprecations.” Noyes. One objection to this view is stated above by Zöckler, that it is not favored by the connection. Another objection suggested by Dav. is that “it is somewhat flat. The second member, instead of rising in significance, seems to fall, for to curse the day appears a much profounder exercise of power, reaching much further, and laying a spell much deeper, even on the hidden principles of nature and time, than any mere charming of an animal, however terrible.” According to the Fathers (whom Lee and Words. follow), Leviathan here is typical of Satan, “the great spiritual Leviathan.” When it is remembered that the same writers find the same typical significance in the description of “leviathan” in chap. 41., the extravagance of the fancy will at once appear. Davidson objects that “it cannot be shown that the superstition [above referred to] was current in Semitic lands; it belongs to India.” It is true, however, that among the Egyptians, with whose institutions the author of this book was well acquainted, eclipses were attributed to the victory of Typhon over the sun-god, that the crocodile (the leviathan of chap. 41.) was a representative of Typhon, and moreover that Egypt was celebrated above all lands for her sorcery. These three facts taken together would of themselves suffice to account for and to explain Job’s language in the passage before us.—E.]
Job_3:9. Let the stars of the twilight be dark; the stars, namely, of its morning twilight, the precursors of approaching day-light, the meaning accordingly being: Let this night be followed by no genuine day’s radiance. In favor of this sense of נֶשֶׁף, to wit, morning twilight, crepusculum, may be urged, apart from the two following members of the verse, the analogy of Job_7:4; Psa_119:147, where נֶשֶׁף has the same signification, though elsewhere certainly it signifies the evening twilight (diluculum), as e.g. Job_24:15; Pro_7:9; 2Ki_7:5. And let it not gaze upon the eye-lashes of the dawn. Delitzsch: “let it not refresh itself with the eye-lashes of the dawn:” correctly as to the sense; for here, as always רָאָה בְ denotes beholding with the feeling of pleasure, enjoying the sight of anything. “The eye-lashes of the dawn” (the same expression is found in Job_41:10) are the first rays of the rising dawn, opening as it were its eyes: comp. χρυσέης ἡμέρας βλέφαρον, Soph. Antiq. 103. [To be noted is the full form of the fut. יִרְאֶה, instead of the apocopated.]
Job_3:10. The כִּי with which the verse begins refers back to the beginning of the period in Job_3:6, and thus gives the ground of the violent curse just pronounced upon the night of his conception. Because it shut not up the doors of my mother’s womb;i.e. did not make the same barren, did not prevent his conception: comp. Gen_16:2; Gen_20:18; 1Sa_1:5. בִּטְגִי, a poetic ellipsis for בֶּטֶן אִמִּי. [Comp. Job_19:17, where the expression בְּנֵי בִטְנִי, acc. to Ges., means brethren born out of the same mother’s womb. See, however, on the passage. “Juvenal has used the same liberty of expression, Sat. 6:1:124: Ostenditque tuum, generose Britannice, ventrem.” Con.]—And so hide sorrow from my eyes. The force of the negation extends out of the first over this, the second member of the verse, as is the case also in Job_3:11. Comp. Gesen. § 152 [§ 149], 3. [The influence of the negative extended here by means of Vav consecutive. See Ewald § 351 a.] The indefinite, and, so to speak, absolute term, עָמָל, denotes some great and fearful affliction which Job was even then suffering.
3. Second Long Strophe: Job utters his choice to be in the realm of the dead rather than in this life, Job_3:11-19. The strophe embraces three sub-divisions, or strophes, of equal length, each consisting of three verses.
a. Job_3:11-13. [The wish that he had died at birth.]
Job_3:11. Why died I not from the womb?i.e., immediately after birth, immediately after I saw the light of this world.—So should מֵרֶחֶם be explained here, according to the parallelism of the second member of the verse, not according to Jer_20:17, which passage speaks rather of dying in the womb (מִן being used there in the local, not the temporal sense), of dying, therefore, as an embryo, a thought which is foreign to our author. (So in opposition to Schlott. and Del.) [The view of Junius, as given by Schlott., of the gradation of thought in this verse and the following, is at least striking enough to be stated here. It represents Job as here cursing his life in four stages of its development: in the womb, immediately after birth, when taken up by the father, and finally when put to the mother’s breast. It may be doubted nevertheless whether Job’s impassioned outburst is characterized by such careful and minute discrimination. The future אָמוּת, like אִוִּ֭לֶד in Job_3:3, is an example of the poet’s bold idealization, which, taking its position back of the moment of birth, asks, ‘Why may I not die from the womb?’ See Green, § 263, 5; Ew. § 136, 6.—E.] Come forth out of the womb and expire?—Expire, to wit, immediately after coming forth. On the extension of the negation over the second member, comp. notes on Job_3:10. [The Fut. (or Imperf.) אֶגְוַע expressing that which is subsequent to the Pret. (Perf.) יָצָאתִי.]
Job_3:12. Why did knees anticipate me? [Con.: Why were the knees ready for me?—“Prevent,” in A. V., in the obsolete sense, to come before, and so to anticipate]: i.e., the knees or lap of the father, joyfully saluting the newly-born child. Comp. Gen_50:23; Isa_66:12. It is less natural to understand the knees of a woman to be meant, to wit, the knees of an attendant midwife or nurse. Comp. Gen_30:3. [“The longing and anxious desire of the yearning mother to nurse her unborn darling has never been so happily expressed elsewhere.” Good.] There is certainly nothing in the passage which points to any custom of heathen antiquity, involving the formal recognition of the child by the father, as Hirzel supposes. [At all events, as Dillm. observes, such a recognition is not the leading thought of the passage.—E.] And what (=why) the breasts that I should suck?—[“There is a certain impatience and disgust in the מָה: Why, what were the breasts that I should suck?” Dav. The dual forms of the original, “two knees,” “two breasts,” are preserved in the translation by Dav. and Renan, perhaps with needless literality.] כּי consecutive, as in chs. Job_6:11; Job_7:12; Job_10:6—and often. The Imperf. (Fut.) אֵינַק describing an action immediately following after that which is previously mentioned, like אֶגְוַע, Job_3:11; אֶשְׁקוֹט and יָנוּחַ, Job_3:13, etc.
Job_3:13. For now I should have lain down and been quiet. A reason for the wish contained in the questions of Job_3:10; Job_3:12; therefore כִּי here=“for,” not “surely” (Del.)—עַתָּה, like אָז elsewhere, “then, by this time.” Comp. Job_13:19; 1Sa_13:13. I should have slept (lit.: “I should have fallen asleep;” and so also in the first member: “I should have laid myself down”), then would there be rest for me, viz., the rest of the dead in the under-world, of the shades in Sheol, which, as compared with the inexpressible misery of this upper world, is evermore rest and repose. For the impersonal use of נוּחַ comp. Isa_23:12; Neh_9:28.
b. Job_3:14-16. A more particular description of the rest in the realms of the dead, which Job longs for. Job_3:14-15 are still dependent on the verbs in Job_3:13.
Job_3:14. With kings and counsellors of the land.—יֹעֲצֵי אֶרֶץ, the counsellors of a land, i.e., the highest officers of the state, royal advisers, not kings themselves. Who built ruins for themselves.—If the reading חֳרָבוֹת is correct, then the passage certainly speaks of the building of ruins (comp. the same word in Isa_58:12; Isa_61:4; Mal_1:4). The expression, however, can scarcely mean the rebuilding of fallen structures, a thought which many of the ancient writers found in it, but which is obviously far-fetched and foreign to the context, especially if the rebuilding of ruined edifices is taken as of the same meaning with the expression, “to be rich, to be well endowed, opibus abundare.” Neither can it refer to the building of mausoleums, houses for the dead, or, in particular, pyramids; an interpretation defended by Hirzel, Ewald, Fürst, Delitzsch, Dillmann [Kamphausen, Wemyss, Bernard, Barnes, Wordsworth, Carey, Renan, Rodwell, Elzas, Merx], but not sufficiently verified etymologically. The Coptic πι—χραμ cannot, without further evidence, be identified with חרבות, even admitting that the interchange of ב and מ is not something unheard of. In any case it could not be proved that the author had in mind the pyramids of Egypt, so that the passage cannot be wrested to favor the theory of the Egyptian nationality of the poet; comp. Introd. § 7. The simplest and most obvious way of explaining it is, with Umbreit, Hahn, Schlottmann, Vaihinger, Heiligstedt [Gesenius, Noyes, Hengstenberg, Green in Chrestom.], to recognize in the חֳרָבוֹת an ironical designation of great, splendid palaces, which, notwithstanding their grandeur, must at last fall into ruin—a process which, in the East, as every where in hot countries, takes place with startling rapidity and suddenness. The expression is thus to be taken in a catachrestic sense, of that which is not yet indeed a ruin, but which will inevitably become such (comp. “dust,” “ashes,” “grass,” “a worm,” etc., used to designate man: Job_10:9; Psa_103:14-15; Psa_90:5, etc.). The difficulty of the expression has suggested several attempts to amend the text, as, e.g., by Böttcher (de inferis, § 298), רַחֲבוֹת, “streets, courts;” by Olshausen, אַרְמְנוֹת, “palaces;” by J. D. Michaelis (Suppl. p. 905), חֳרָמוֹת, which, according to the Arabic, would be “temples, sanctuaries.” Comp. also the LXX., which translates by ἐγαυριῶντο ἐπὶ ξίφεσιν, the text of which would be הַגַּאֲיוֹנִים בַּחֲרָבוֹת. [The expression as it stands in the text is certainly a difficult one, and unquestioning confidence in regard to the true interpretation is scarcely to be looked for. The rendering adopted by Zöckler, “who have built themselves ruins,” is indeed, as he claims, the simplest and most obvious rendering of the words as they now read. But, on the other hand, it may be urged: (1) This proleptic ironical use of the word “ruins” in the connection would be an unlooked for and an artificial interruption of the pathetic flow of thought—of the ardent, plaintive yearning for death, or for the condition in which death would place him. (2) The kind of irony which would thus be expressed is unsuited to the state of Job’s feelings in this discourse. Irony there is in the passage doubtless, but it is the irony of personal feeling, suggested by the contrast between his present misery and destitution, and the rest and equality of the grave. The irony which would have led him to see ruins in the palaces of the great would have been altogether alien to the intense subjectivity of his mood. Job is here thinking of himself—of what he would have been—of the rest, and the equality with earth’s greatest, which would have been his, had he died at his birth. To interject here a sudden satire on the destiny awaiting the external splendor of others would be untrue to nature, and so unworthy of the poet’s art. (3) The anticipation of ruin seems scarcely in harmony with the particular object of the immediate context, which is to describe the greatness of kings and counsellors, as of men high in rank and rich in their possessions. As Davidson says of this interpretation, it is “a sense which does not magnify, but minishes, the reputation of the great dead.” On the other hand, the interpretation “mausoleums” or “pyramids” is in harmony with the particular object of the context, enhancing the greatness of the persons spoken of, as well as with the general train of thought and feeling in this strophe, dwelling as it does on the condition and surroundings of the dead. It does not seem unreasonable, therefore, to conclude either that the word in its present form may be thus defined, or that the word in its original form being an unusual one, or of foreign origin, it was afterwards modified under the influence of the familiar Hebrew phrase, “to build ruins,” בָּנָה חֳרָבוֹת.—E.]
Job_3:15. Or with princes that had gold, who filled their houses with silver.—If the חרבות of the preceding verse are not “pyramids,” the בָּתִּים of this verse cannot possibly be understood to mean “houses of the dead,” as Hirzel explains. But even if that construction of the former verse be the true one, it would still be in the highest degree unnatural, artificial, and forced, to understand the expression in the passage before us as meaning any thing else than the riches which princes during life heap up in their palaces. Comp. Job_22:18.
Job_3:16. Or like a hidden untimely birth I should not be.—I should not exist, have no being. נֶפֶל, lit. a “falling away” (ἔκτρωμα), an abortion, as in Psa_58:9; Ecc_6:8. For טָמַן in the sense of “to hide in the ground, to bury,” comp. Gen_35:4; Exo_2:12. The second member more particularly describes the condition of these abortions, as of those who never saw the light (“the light of life;” comp. Job_33:30). Furthermore, as to its contents, the entire verse, although varying in construction from the verse preceding, is by the אוֹ at the beginning made co-ordinate with it; and this immediate juxtaposition of the founders of great palaces [or pyramids], of rich millionaires, and—of still-born babes! produces a contrast most bizarre and startling in its effect. “All these are removed from the sufferings of this life in the quiet of their 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.” Delitzsch.
c. Job_3:17-19. Exhibiting more in detail the extent to which death equalizes the inequalities of men’s lots in life.
Job_3:17. There the wicked have ceased their raging.—שָׁם, in the state of the dead, in the under-world [“conceived of after the analogy of sepulchral caves, and where the dead were deemed to preserve the same relations which they had held during their life.” Ren.]. רְשָׁעִים, the godless, the abandoned, who are ruled by evil passions and lusts, as in Isa_48:22; Isa_57:21; Psa_1:4, etc. Hence רֹגֶז is the stormy agitation, or inward raging of such men [“corresponds to the radical idea of looseness, broken in pieces, want of restraint, therefore of Turba, contained etymologically in רָשָׁע.”—Del.]; comp. Isa_57:20; Jer_6:7. Dillmann understands by the “raging of the wicked” the furious ravaging of insolent tyrants, with which is then vividly contrasted in the second member the enfeebled, powerless condition of those who are “exhausted of strength.” But there is nothing in the connection to show that any such contrast was intended between tyrants and the oppressed, between persecutors and the persecuted; and even the mention of the “taskmaster” in Job_3:18 has nothing in it to confirm this interpretation, which arbitrarily attributes to רְשָׁעִים the sense of עריצים. Comp. Job_15:20; Job_27:13; Isa_13:11; Isa_25:3; Psa_37:25, etc. [in most of which passages, however, it will be found that the parallelism sustains the notion of the equivalence of the two terms, and of the frequent use of the former in the sense assigned to it by Dillmann. Do we not hear in these words an echo of Job’s own calamities? Were not the turbulent, restless, fierce Chaldeans and Sabeans fit types of the רְשָׁעִים with their רֹגֶז? and was not Job himself in his present helplessness one of the very יְגִיעֵי כֹחַ?—E.]
Job_3:18. Together rest the prisoners.—יחד, all together, so many as there are of them, as in Job_24:4. [“The Pilelשַׁאֲנַן signifies perfect freedom from care.” Del.]—They hear not the taskmaster’s voice, i.e., the voice of the overseer, or slave-driver, issuing his orders, urging to work, and threatening with blows. Comp. Gen_3:7; Gen_5:6; Gen_5:10; Zec_9:8.
Job_3:19. Small and great are there the same.—הוּא שָׁם; not “are there, are found there” (LXX., Vulg., Hirz., Hahn, Schl. [Hengstenb.; Ren., Good, Lee, Con., Dav., Rod.]), but “are there the same, equal in rank and worth.” הוּא here accordingly is emphatic=ὁ αὐτός, idem, as also in Isa_41:4; Psa_102:28. [So Umbr., Ew., Del., Wem., Elz. The thought is substantially the same, according to either view. According to the former, הוּא refers with emphasis to each subject, individually, “he, each is there,” implying equality of condition; according to the latter, הוּא has more the quality of a predicate, expressing equality of condition. The former is preferable, as being simpler, more customary, and better suited to the double subject, “small” and “great.” Elsewhere in the sense of idem it is used of a single subject. Comp. ref. above.—E.] Furthermore, the second member: “and free (is) the servant from his master,” shows in a special manner that our verse is parallel in sense to the preceding; as there “prisoners” and “taskmasters” are contrasted, so here in the first member “small” and “great,” in the second “servant” and “master.” [Davidson, perhaps, finds too much in these words when he says (although the remark is a striking one): “It is this last that fascinates Job in the place of the dead—the slave is free from his master; and Job is the slave, and one whom he will not name is the master—Has not man a hard service on the earth, and as the days of a hireling are his days?” Job_7:1.]
4. Third Long Strophe (divided into two shorter strophes of three and four verses respectively): Job asks, why must he, who is weary of life, still live? Job_3:20-26.
a. Job_3:20-22. [The question in a general form.]
Job_3:20. Wherefore gives He light to the wretched one?—The name of God, who is unmistakably the subject of the clause, is not expressly mentioned, from a motive of reverential awe; it is presupposed as a thing self-evident that he who gives light is God, and none other. Comp. Job_24:22. [The Eng. Ver. takes the verb impersonally: “Wherefore is light given, etc.?” And so Good, Lee, Wemyss, Ren., etc. Schlottmann and Green also prefer the impersonal construction on the ground that it is better suited to the present discourse and the state of feeling from which it proceeds, and that supplying ‘God’ as the subject “gives an uncalled-for appearance of open and conscious murmuring to these moanings of uncontrollable anguish.” It is to be observed, however, that in verse 23 the hedging of man about is directly ascribed to God; and that although God is not formally challenged by name as yet, there is through the whole discourse an audible under-tone of suppressed defiance, which seems all the time on the point of expressing itself. At the same time, one cannot but feel that this Curse is a cry of anguish rather than a cry of defiance, and that the suppression of God’s name in this connection is a most natural manifestation of Job’s feelings in their present stage of development—although, as Hirzel has shown, it is quite in our author’s manner thus to omit the name of God. See Job_8:18; Job_12:13; Job_16:7; Job_20:23; Job_22:21; Job_25:2; Job_27:22; Job_30:19. “Gives he, a distant fling at God, though a certain reverence refuses to utter His name, but He is at the base of such awful entanglement and perverse attitude of things.” (Dav.).—E.]
Parallel with לְעָמֵל, “to the wretched,” stands in the second member, לְמָרֵי נֶפֶשׁ, “to the troubled in soul,” those whose heart is troubled [lit. “the bitter in soul,” i.e., those whose souls have known life’s bitterness.—E.] The same expression is found in Pro_31:6; 1Sa_1:10; 1Sa_22:2.
Job_3:21-22 contain specifications in participial form of the phrase מָרֵי נֶפֶשׁ, with finite verbs attached in the second member of each verse, a construction which elsewhere also is not unfrequently met with (see Ew. § 350, b).
Job_3:21. Who wait long for death—and it comes not (lit. “and it is not,” וְאֵינֶנּוּ, comp. verse 9), and dig for it more than for [hidden] treasures.—The Imperf. consec. וַיַּחְפְּרוּ is used here in the sense of the Present, as also elsewhere occasionally (see Ew. § 342. a). [The Vav. consec. would indicate that the digging for death is consequent upon waiting for it—the passive waiting and longing being succeeded by the more active digging and searching for it. A terrible picture of the progress of human misery.—E.] It is not necessary (with Hahn and Schlottmann) to translate by the subjunctive form, “who would dig” (would willingly do so). Delitzsch’s assumption, that the fut. consec. is used “because the sufferers are regarded as now at last dead,” is altogether too artificial. The discourse presents rather an ardent longing after death on the part of those who are as yet living—and this longing is described so as to harmonize with the figurative representation of a “digging after pearls or treasures.” Comp. chap, Job_28:1 sq., 9 sq. [Ewald, not inaptly: “for death, like such treasures, seems to come out of earth’s most secret womb, even as Pluto is the god of both.”] On חפּר with accus. of the thing which is dug out, comp. Exo_7:24 [showing the incorrectness of the assertion that in the sense of digging, the verb takes only the accusative of the cavity produced by digging, and so justifying the rendering “to dig” here.—E.]
Job_3:22. Who are joyful, even to rapture—heightening the thought: usque ad exultationem, exactly as in Hos_9:1. In like manner the following יָשִׂישׂוּ contains a still further advance in the strength of the thought. [“The verse is a climax, (1) rejoice, (2) to exultation, (3) dance for joy.” Dav.
“Who rejoice, even to exultation,
And are triumphant, when they can find out the grave.”—
Good.]
Job_3:23-26. [The individual application of Job’s question.]
Job_3:23 resumes, after the parenthesis contained in the two preceding verses, the dative construction begun in Job_3:20, and governed by the verb יִתֵּן of that verse. To a man whose way is hidden:viz. to me, to Job himself; comp. the following verses, in which the speaker’s own person appears as the prominent theme of discourse. [לְגֶבֶר, “to a man,” a general expression as yet, although evidently the speaker is thinking of himself. The verse forms the transition from the general description of the verses preceding to the direct description of the verses following.—E.] For a similar use of the figurative expressions “covering and hedging the way” to represent the act of putting a man in a helpless, forsaken, inextricable situation; comp. Job_19:8; also Lam_3:5; Isa_40:27. [Renan translates:
“To the man whose way is covered with darkness,
And whom God has environed with a fatal circle.”
“He means, by having his way hid, being bewildered and lost: the world and thought and providence become a labyrinth to him, out of which and in which no path can be found, his speculative and religious belief hopelessly entangled, and his heart palsied and paralyzed by its own conflicting emotions and memories, so that action and thought were impossible, a hedge being about him, his whole life and condition being contradiction and inexplication, a step or two leading to a stand-still in any direction.” Dav.]
Job_3:24. For [כִּי, personal confirmation of the preceding statement] instead of my bread comes my sighing.—לִפְנֵי here not in the local sense, “before” [“in presence of it, and hence in effect along with it. Meaning: even at that season of enjoyment and thankfulness, when food is partaken, I have only pain and sorrow.” Con.], but as also in Job_4:19; 1Sa_1:16, “for, instead of” (comp. the Latin pro). [Akin to this is the definition “like,” from the idea of comparison involved in that of presence or nearness. So Schult., Dav., Ren.] Less suitable is the temporal construction: “before my food [=before I eat] sighing still comes to me.” [“My groans anticipate my food.” Wem.] (so Hahn, Hirz., Schl., etc., after the LXX., Vulgate, etc.) [The temporal sense is somewhat differently given by Green, Chrest., “before, sooner than; perpetually repeated, with greater frequency than his regular food.” The suggestion found in Rosenm., Bar., etc., that Job’s disease made his food loathsome in the act of eating gives a meaning needlessly offensive, and is not suited either to the connection or to the terms employed. The fut. תָּבֹא is used in the frequentative sense.—E.] And my groans pour themselves forth like water:i.e. as incessantly as water, which flows ever onward, or is precipitated from a height. As is evident, a strong comparison, and one which would be greatly weakened by the explanation of Hirzel and others, who find in it an allusion to the water of Job’s daily drink, parallel with לחם, his daily bread. For the masc., וַיִּתְּכוּ before the fem. subj. שַׁאֲגתַי, comp. Job_16:22; Ewald § 191 b. [Future frequentative like תָּבֹא], For שַׁאֲגָה, lit. roaring (Job_4:10) in the sense of groaning, the moaning of a sufferer. Comp. Psa_22:2; Psa_32:3.
Job_3:25. For if I trembled before anything, it forthwith came upon me. Lit.: “For a fear have I feared, and forthwith it has overtaken me.” [“Let me but think of a terror,” פחד פ׳׳ is present and concessive, אִם understood, suppose me to fear a fear, to conceive a terror; it is no sooner conceived than realized: and not past and positive, I feared a fear, as if Job, in the height of his felicity, had been haunted by the presentiment of coming calamity, a meaning which is opposed to the whole convictions of antiquity, and contradicted by the anguish and despair of the man under his suffering, which was to him inexplicable and unexpected. The picture refers exclusively to the present misery of the man.… It overtakes me, וַיֶּאֶתָיֵנִי, vav consec. introduces the issue of the dread: the thing dreaded immediately comes.” Dav. So Green in Chrest.: “The meaning is not that he had apprehensions in his former prosperity, which have now been fulfilled; but all that is dreadful in his esteem has been already, or is likely soon to be (יָבֹא, fut.), realized in his experience. He endures all that he has ever conceived that is frightful.”] For the poetic full-sounding form יֶאֱתָיֵנִי, comp. chap, Job_12:6; Job_16:22; Job_30:14 (Ew. § 252, a. [Green, § 172, 3]).
[Merx, transposing Job_3:23, introduces it here, as immediately following Job_3:25. His version accordingly reads as follows:
For the Terror, of which I was afraid, overtook me;
And that which with shuddering I looked for came to me,
To the man whose path was covered;
Whom Eloah hedged in round about.
He thus makes the לְ before גֶבֶר a repetition of the לִי, end of Job_3:25, and not of לְעָמֵֹל, Job_3:20, according to the old position. He further would make the verse in its new position an ironical echo of Satan’s words in Job_1:10.—The conjecture is certainly highly ingenious. But there are decisive objections to the change. The first and weightiest is that the irony loses all its force, and the words themselves become all but meaningless in Job’s mouth when it is remembered that the words were first spoken by Satan in the heavenly council, where Job was not present. It is an essential part of the mystery of the drama here unfolded that Job knows nothing whatever of the transactions between God and Satan. Any conscious allusion to anything in those transactions on the part of Job would be a blunder of art of which our author is incapable; and without such conscious intent the words lose all their pertinency. Moreover, the verse in its old position, as is remarked in the notes above, furnishes the transition from the general description of Job_3:20-22 to the more personal application of Job_3:24-26.—E.]
Job_3:26. I have no quiet, no repose, no rest; and still trouble comes. On the abrupt brevity of the second member, comp. above, No. 1.—רֹגֶז, here certainly more in the sense of grief, pain, trembling, than of passionate excitement, or rage, and so with a meaning different from Job_3:17 : but always (and so in Job_3:17, as well as here) of an inward affection, not of external “distress” (Schlott.), or of a “storm” (Hahn), etc. Vaihinger’s rendering: “restless life,” is correct as to sense, but fails of doing justice to the pointed brevity of the expression. [The Vulgate reads this verse interrogatively: “Was I not in safety? had I no rest? was I not in comfort? Yet trouble came.” So also the Targ. with curious amplifications: “Did I not dissimulate when it was told me concerning the oxen and the asses? did I not sleep when it was told me concerning the fire?” etc.]
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. In so far as we may be disposed to find the theme of the following discussion in the preceding chapter, it behooves us in any case to hold for certain that this theme is expressed only partially, and altogether formally, or only, so to speak, in an interrogative form. Job certainly does not come across the question in this discourse. To curse his existence, to ask again and again after the incomprehensible Wherefore of that existence—this constitutes the whole of this violent outbreak of feeling, with which Job initiates the discussion which follows. He does not give the slightest intimation in regard to the right way of solving the problem which torments him—the problem touching the enigma of his sorrowful existence; indeed he makes not the slightest attempt at such a solution. He pours forth in all its bitterness and harshness his despairing lamentation concerning the helpless misery of man, who is become the object of the divine anger. What he puts forth vividly reminds us from beginning to end of those well-known utterances of the Greek poets, which declare it best never to have been born, and next best to die as quickly as possible. Comp. Theognis:
ΙΙάντων μὲν μὴ φῦναι ἐπιχθονίοισιν ἄριστον
μηδ̓ ἐσιδεἰν αὐγὰς οξέος ἠελίου·
φυντα δ̓ ὅπως ὥκιστα πύλας Αΐδαο περῆσαι
καὶ κε͂ισθαι πολλὴν γῆν ἐπαμησάμενον,–
also the similar expressions of Bacchylides (Fragm. 3), Æsop (Anthol. Gr. x. 123), Sophocles (Oed. Col. 1225: μὴ φῦναι τὸν ἄπαντα νικᾷ λόγον τὸ δ̓ ἐπῇν φανῆ, βῆναι κεῖθεν, ὄθεν περ ἤκει, πολὺ δεύτερον, ῶς τάχιστα: not to have been born surpasses everything which can be said: or if one has come to the light, to descend there whence he came as quickly as possible is by far the second best thing), of Alexis (in Athenæus, Deipnos. iii. 124, 6), of Pliny (Hist. Nat. vii. 1), etc. Especially current in heathen literature, although indeed often enough hinted at by the singers of the Old Testament, especially in the Psalms and the Lamentations of Jeremiah, is this manifoldly uttered lament over the ruined estate, the bankruptcy of the natural man in his unredeemed condition, left to himself, delivered over without remedy to the consequences of sin—a lament which here falls on our ears, without a single ray of comfort from on high to shine on its deep gloom, without any alleviating influence whatever from the hope of a better Hereafter, of which not a trace is as yet visible here.
2. Notwithstanding all this, however, Job does not altogether fall into the tone of those heathen, of those ἐλπίδα μὴ ἔχοντες καὶ ἅθεοι ἐν τὡ κόσμῳ (Eph_2:12; comp. 1Th_4:13). He does indeed ask: Why does God give light to the sorrowful, and life to the bitter in soul (Job_3:20)? He is not found now, as aforetime (Job_1:21 seq.), praising God in the midst of his sufferings; in so far as with all earnestness he curses his birth and conception, he is palpably guilty of “sinning with his lips” (Job_2:10), instead of exhibiting, as he had previously done, a childlike pious submission. But he by no means goes over to the side of Satan, that enemy of God, who is the author of his temptation. He does not go so far astray as presumptuously to “curse God to His face” (Job_1:11; Job_2:7), as Satan had purposed that he should. He curses indeed the divine act of creation which had given him being, but not the Creator himself; the curse which he pronounces on his day does not put forth that wicked blasphemous sentiment which H. Heine expresses in one of his last poems:
“ ’Tis well to die; but better still
It were had mother never borne us.”
His words are words of lamentation and despondency, of doubt and questioning, but not words of blasphemy, nor even of atheistic doubt, renouncing all faith in a living, good and just God. They show, indeed, that the trust which he had hitherto exercised in God had been violently shaken, that there was a wavering and faltering in the child-like obedience which, with touching loyalty, he had hitherto constantly yielded to God. But they are nevertheless only preparatory to the later, and far more passionate outbreaks of discontent with God’s dealings to which he gives way. Even when he mentions here a man whose way God has “hidden and hedged about” (Job_3:23), he is still far from indulging in any accusation of God as a cruel and unjust persecutor; it is as yet a comparatively harmless complaint, in the utterance of which the bitter accusation of his later discourses is only remotely anticipated. It is a fact, however, that he who has hitherto lived blamelessly in his fidelity to God does, in the complaints which in this discourse gush forth from his heart, enter on that downward path which, in proportion as his friends prove themselves to be unskilful comforters, and as physicians accomplished only in torturing, not in healing, leads him ever further from God and ever deeper into the abyss of joyless despair. Comp. Delitzsch (1:84): “Job nowhere says, that he will have nothing more to do with God; he does not renounce his former faithfulness. In the mind of the writer, however, as may be gathered from Job_2:10, this speech is to be regarded as the beginning of Job’s sinning. If a man, on account of his sufferings, wishes to die early, or not to have been born at all, he has lost his confidence that God, even in the severest suffering, designs his highest good; and this want of confidence is sin. There is, however, a great difference between a man who has in general no trust in God, and in whom suffering only makes this manifest in a terrible manner, and the man with whom trust in God is a habit of his soul, and is only momentarily repressed, and, as it were, paralyzed. Such interruption of the habitual state may result from the first pressure of unaccustomed suffering; it may then seem as though trust in God were overwhelmed, whereas it has only given way to rally itself again. It is, however, not the greatness of the affliction in itself which shakes his sincere trust in God, but a change of disposition on the part of God, which seems to be at work in the affliction. The sufferer considers himself as forgotten, forsaken and rejected of God; therefore he sinks into despair; and in this despair expression is given to the profound truth (although with regard to the individual that expression is a sinful weakness), that it is better never to have been born, or to be annihilated, than to be rejected of God (comp. Mat_26:24, καλὸν ἦναὐτῷ εἰ οὐκ ἐγεννήθη ὁ ἄνθρωπος ἐκεῖνος). In such a condition of spiritual, and, as we know from the prologue, of Satanic temptation (Luk_22:31; Eph_6:16), is Job. He does not despair when he contemplates his affliction, but when he looks at God through it, who, as though He were become his enemy, has surrounded him with his affliction as with a rampart. … It is indeed inconceivable that a New Testament believer, even under the strongest temptation, should utter such imprecations, or especially such a question of doubt as in Job_3:20 : Wherefore is light given to the miserable? But that an Old Testament believer might very easily become involved in such conflicts of belief may be accounted for by the absence of any express divine revelation to carry his mind beyond the bounds of the present.”1
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
The above chapter presents as a whole but little material for homiletic use. The description of human misery, as here elaborated by Job, before the coming of the Redeemer, is too much pervaded by a passionate one-sidedness, to be susceptible of practical application in the way of exhortation or encouragement. Unless, as with many of the ancient and most of the Romish commentators, the discourse of Job be idealized, and that which is objectionable in it be set aside, after the fashion of an artificial, moralistic and allegoristic exegesis, it presents more which from the Christian point of view is to be censured than to be accepted as sound and authoritative teaching. It behooves us at all events to treat it critically, and from the stand-point of a higher and maturer evangelical perception of the truth to discriminate in Job’s complaints and doubtful questionings that which belongs wholly to the Old Testament era, before Christ, and to an imperfectly regenerated humanity, and which is incompatible with the spirit and belief of a suffering saint under the New Dispensation. It behooves us, in a word, to set beside each other the impatient sufferer, Job, with the most patient of all sufferers, Christ. It behooves us to show the contrast between him, who, oppressed by the weight of his sufferings, cursed the day of his birth, and Him, who, when confronted by a yet more bitter and terrible cup of suffering, prayed: “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as Thou wilt!” It must be noted that Job, in cursing his existence, and thereby (at least indirectly) calling in question God’s goodness and justice, departs from the stand-point of the pious sufferers of the Old Testament, and seemingly betakes himself to that of the heathen in their disconsolate and hopeless estate (comp. Doctrinal Remarks, No. 1), whereas the strongest utterance of lamentation and anguish which Christ puts forth is that exclamation from the Psalms: “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” Let this question of the Crucified One accordingly be taken, and put alongside of the two questions of Job beginning with the interrogative “why” (Job_3:11 seq. and Job_3:20 seq.), and this comparison be formulated thus: The “Why” of the suffering Job, and that of Christ; or: Job and Christ, the sorely tried sufferers, and the different questions addressed by them to God. Comp. Brentius in his introductory Meditation on the Chap.: Christ exclaims that He is forsaken, because the Lord appears solely in the character of Judge, inflicting sentence of death, thus hiding in the meanwhile His paternal στοργὴ. This the Scriptures call sometimes forsaking, sometimes being asleep. There is the same judicial character in the treatment of Job. For during his first trials (chap. 1–2) he feels the Lord to be as yet his Father, and His hand to be supporting him; and so he stands without difficulty, being founded on a firm rock. But now, the Father being hidden from him, a horrible sentence of death is set before him. No longer therefore do you hear thanksgivings from him, but blasphemies and curses, so that you may say, that the Lord alone is good and true, but that every man, however just and pious, is a liar.
Particular Passages. Job_3:3-10 : Osiander: If a man’s heart be not ruled and curbed by the grace of the Holy Spirit, it fumes and rages under the cross, instead of bearing it patiently.—Wohlfarth: This saying (“Cursed be the day wherein I was born,” etc.) is rightly imputed to the tried sufferer as a great sin by the Holy Scripture, and by himself, because the day of our birth comes to us from God, the best Father, and makes us witnesses of so many instances of His grace.… Job’s case may warn you against incurring such guilt, as to murmur against your Lord, and teach you, so far from cursing the day of your birth, much rather to thank God for it, Psalm 134:14 sq.
Job_3:11-19. Brentius: The godly and the ungodly alike declare that death is the last limit of earthly affairs, that it is a quiet deliverance from life’s ills. But the one class declare this in unbelief, the other in faith. For the godly man … wishes to depart and to be with Christ, seeing that he has no other release from the sinfulness of the flesh than death, which nevertheless is not his death, but his redemption. But the ungodly, feeling in himself the heavy scourgings of Divine judgment, desires death as rest and deliverance from these scourgings. It is unbelief, however, that produces this wish, which longs after death, not because of the sinfulness of the flesh, but on account of the scourgings.—v. Gerlach. Death seems in this and in similar sections of the book (as is so often the case also in the Psalms) as a state of peace and quiet, it is true, but as being at the same time a pale, empty, shadowy existence, such as it was conceived to be among the heathen, as e.g. in the Eleventh Book of the Odyssey.… These and similar descriptions we are not to esteem as the human representations appropriate to a crude superstitious age; rather is this to be regarded as the actual condition of the departed without the redemption which is through Christ. It was in this condition that Christ found them after completing His redemptive work on earth, when He preached to the “spirits in prison” (1Pe_3:18 sq.).… The awful truth of these descriptions of the realm of the dead in our book and in the Psalms should accordingly fill even the Christian, who still lives in the body and in the world with holy earnestness, when he remembers the character of that state which follows a life out of Christ; and how with these descriptions the narrative which Jesus gives of the rich man in the place of torment links itself.
Job_3:20-26. Cocceius: Under the yoke of the law, before the revelation of the Gospel, a burden lay upon our fathers, such as they could neither bear nor lay aside. And although they panted after the liberty of the sons of God, there were still so many hindrances in the way, that they could never enjoy the full blessedness which results from a conscience τετελειωμένη, and inwardly absolved.… Whoever, therefore, of them cursed his life should be regarded by us not so much as resisting the ordinance of God, or spurning His kindness, but rather as panting after the liberty of the Gospel, while struggling with the yoke of the law.—Zeyss (on Job_3:23-24): God often shuts up the way of His children with the thorns of affliction, in order that they may never turn aside out of it; He knows, however, how easily to open it again, after He has tried them first.… The bread of tears is the most common food of pious Christians in this world; it is their comfort, however, that the true bread of joy will certainly follow hereafter; Psa_80:6; Psa_102:10; Psa_126:5-6; Joh_16:20. Hengstenberg: The answer to Job’s questions is this: God chastises the pious in righteous retribution, and for their good, but He does not deliver them over to death. There is no “wretched one” (Job_3:21) in Job’s sense of the term, understanding by it, as he does, one who is absolutely miserable. The man who should be permanently miserable would be so in consequence of his sin, as the penalty of his delinquency, the suffering which should lead him to God, and put him in spiritual union with Him, having driven him away from God.
Footnotes:
[1]On the relation of Jeremiah’s outburst of despair (Job_20:14-18), in which the prophet partially imitates in expression the passage before us, to Job’s similar lament, comp. Delitzsch (i. 86 seq, who is certainly right in calling attention to the greater brevity of the passage in Jeremiah, and who is for that reason not disinclined, with Hitzig, to attribute to the prophet a momentary paroxysm of excitement, occasioned by the extremely disconsolate condition of his nation at that time); also Nägelsbach on Jeremiah l. c.; as also Hengstenberg. Das Buch Hiob, p. 120 [see also Lowth’s remarks in the Exegetical Notes].
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv2–9 spake--Hebrew, "answered," that is, not to any actual question…
spake--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.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv1–9 1. After this — With the close of the…
THE LAMENTATION.
1. After this — With the close of the Historical Introduction, Satan, as an open actor, disappears from the scene; the supernatural passes into abeyance; and we are for awhile left alone with Job, notwithstanding his friends still sit by in formal etiquette, and with professional sympathy. Faith has been triumphant in every conflict, and the very language of the original, and of our own beautiful English version, seems to partake of the spirit prevailing around — the calmness and serenity of the victory towards which all had tended. We are as little prepared for the impending violent outburst of grief and despair, as Job was for the storm that destroyed his family and home. A dyke may for a long time hold the vast volumes of a flood in check, only to make the devastation the more disastrous when once it breaks away. Such is the flood, long kept back by the power of faith, that now bursts forth. We are borne along amid the wreck of broken thoughts, struggling images, and impassioned cries. It is the one lamentation of all literature overwhelming us with its awfulness, and leading us to grasp the rock that is higher than we.
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The question naturally arises as to the immediate cause for Job’s so sudden precipitation from the assured heights of trust and resignation into the yawning depths of despair. However sincere the friends may have been at the outset of their ministrations, they somewhere failed in these, and dashed the cup of consolation with lees of bitterness. Their breedings over his peculiar afflictions must in some way have betrayed themselves to the keen eyes of Job. (See notes on Job_3:2; Job_6:14.) The failure of the friends was the failure of Job’s last earthly hope. The strained “back” of the sufferer was not equal to this, “the last straw” of grief. His cursing of every phase of existence proclaims that nothing now remains to Job but his grave and his God. The lamentation divides itself, according to Hahn, into, first, a wild cursing of life. which has brought his calamity; Job_3:3-10. Second, an ardent desire for death, to bring him rest; Job_3:11-19. Third, reproachful questioning of life, if indeed it must bring sorrow; Job_3:20-26.
Job opened his mouth — A formula used when a speech of more than usual gravity is expected.
And cursed his day — His birthday. (Job_3:3; Hos_7:5.) He does not curse God. The issue made by Satan was, that he would “curse” (renounce) “God.” The word here used is קלל, to speak ill, or make light of. — Gesenius. (See note on barak, to curse, or renounce, Job_1:5.) “Job’s cursing the day may be viewed as simply an Oriental glowering over his misery, stopping at the second causes, and never dreaming of impeaching the divine First Cause. A logician might tell him that his words implicated the First Cause, and but for his paroxysm of woe he would be responsible; but he thinks no such implication. After the human probationary measure he is innocent — still “perfect;” but tried by the absolute, as he soon will be, he is guilty.” Compare with this lament the more brief and polished, but less impressive, one of Jeremiah, (Jer_20:14-18,) which of all Scriptures more nearly approaches the solemnly majestic and tragic wail of Job; and while “that of Jeremiah is milder, softer, and more plaintive, peculiarly calculated to excite pity,” (LOWTH, Hebrews Poet.,) it is evidently modelled after this, the vastly older pattern. In this we are painfully affected by the intense subjectiveness of the protracted outcry which, better than any descriptive language, discloses the great deep of Job’s misery. Dean Swift, at the height of his glory, upon the return of his birthday, was wont to “lament it” by repeating this chapter. — ROSCOE’S Life of Swift.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 1. cursed his day] The day of his birth.…
1. cursed his day] The day of his birth. Reverent minds have always found difficulty in accommodating themselves to the religious boldness of the Book of Job. A curious instance of this is given in the Catena of Greek interpreters on Job, where one writer interprets Job’s “day” to be the day when man fell from righteousness to sin. The same feeling has influenced the translation of Job_13:15 and Job_19:25.
1–10. Would God I had never been conceived or born
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This is the idea really expressed when Job curses his day and wishes it blotted out of existence. First he curses the day of his birth and the night of his conception together, Job_3:3, and then each separately, the day in two verses and the night in four. Let darkness seize that day; let not God from above seek after it; let thick darkness and the shadow of death claim it as part of their heritage; let clouds and all that maketh black the day, eclipses, ominous obscurations, affright it, Job_3:4-5. Let darkness swallow up that night that it be not reckoned nor come in among the joyful troop of nights in their glittering procession; while other nights ring with birth-day gladness let it sit barren; let enchanters curse it; let it be endless, waiting always for a dawn that never breaks, Job_3:6-10.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv1, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 (1) After this opened Job his mouth.—There is a…
III.
(1) After this opened Job his mouth.—There is a striking similarity between this chapter and Jer_20:14-18, so much so that one must be borrowed from the other; the question is, which is the original? Is Jeremiah the germ of this? or is this the tree from which a branch has been hewn by Jeremiah? Our own conviction is that Job is the original, inasmuch as this chapter is indispensable to the development of the poem; but in Jeremiah the passage occurs casually as the record of a passing mood of despair. It is, moreover, apparently clear that Jeremiah is quoting Job as he might quote one of the Psalms or any other writing with which he was familiar. He was applying to daily life the well-known expression of a patriarchal experience, whereas in the other case the words of Job would be the ideal magnifying of a commonplace and realistic experience.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 The "Historical Introduction" ended, we come upon a long…
The "Historical Introduction" ended, we come upon a long colloquy, in which the several dramatis personae speak for themselves, the writer, or compiler, only prefacing each speech with a very few necessary words. The speeches are, one and all of them, metrical; and are well represented in the Revised Version. The first colloquy extends from Job_3:1-Job Job_14:22.
After this opened Job his mouth. The first to take the word is Job, as, indeed, etiquette made necessary, when the visit paid was one of condolence. It can only be conjectured what the feelings were which had kept him silent so long. We may, perhaps, suggest that in the countenances and manner of his friends he saw something which displeased him, something indicative of their belief that he had brought his afflictions upon himself by secret sins of a heinous character. Pharisaism finds it very difficult to conceal itself; signs of it are almost sure to escape; often it manifests itself, without a word spoken, most offensively. The phrase, "opened his mouth," is not to be dismissed merely as a Hebraism. It is one used only on solemn occasions, and implies the utterance of deep thoughts, well considered beforehand, (Psa_78:21 Mat_5:2) or of feelings long repressed, and now at length allowed expression. And cursed his day ; "cursed," i.e. , the "day of his birth." Some critics think that "cursed" is too strong a word, and suggest "reviled;" but it cannot be denied that "to curse" is a frequent meaning of llq and it is difficult to see in Job"s words (vers. 3-10) anything but a "curse" of a very intense character. To curse one"s natal day is not, perhaps, a very wise act, since it can have no effect on the day or on anything else; but so great a prophet as Jeremiah imitated Job in this respect, (Jer_20:14-18) so that before Christianity it would seem that men were allowed thus to relieve their feelings. All that such cursing means is that one wishes one had never been born.
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Vers. 1-10. The stricken patriarch"s lament: 1. Deploring his birth.
I DELIBERATE DISCOURSE.
1. The time. "After this;" i.e. after the seven days" silence, after waiting, perhaps, for some expression of sympathy from his friends, perhaps also after discerning no mitigation in his misery an indication that Job spoke not under the influence of some sudden paroxysm of grief, but with fixed resolve and after mature consideration. Language that is passionate may also be deliberate; and although hasty words are sometimes more excusable than composed utterances, as a rule it is wiser and better, especially when under strong emotion, to be "swift to hear, but slow to speak". (Jam_1:19)
2. The manner. "Opened Job his mouth." The usual Hebrew formula for intimating the commencement of a speech; this may also mark, in accordance with Oriental custom, the grave composure and solemn stateliness with which Job began his address, as well as hint at the exceptional character of his discourse. Already, since the beginning of his troubles, he had twice opened his mouth to bless God and justify his ways; never until now had he opened his mouth to curse.
II IMPASSIONED ELOQUENCE.
1. The sublimity of Job"s language. "There is nothing in ancient or modern poetry equal to the entire burst, whether in the wildness and horror of its imprecations, or the terrible sublimity of its imagery (Goode). "There is indeed a tremendous bulk and heat in his words; his imagination has Titanic grasp and violence in it. All nature"s powers he translates into living things" (Davidson).
2. The naturalness of Job"s language. Even on the hypothesis that the verses contain rather the formulated conceptions of the author than the ipsissima verba of Job, one cannot but feel the dramatic suitability of beth their thought and language to the situation, as well as to the individual to whom they have been assigned. It does not strike one as too lofty for a man of the intellectual calibre of Job; nor does it appear to be inappropriate as a vehicle for the burning thoughts that were then struggling for utterance within his grief-laden soul.
3. The influence of Job"s language. "The boldest and most animated poets of Jerusalem made it the model of their threnodies or grief-songs, whenever uttered in scenes of similar distress". (Goode; cf. Lam_3:1-20 Jer_20:14 16 Eze_30:14-18 Eze_32:7-9, etc.) Among the instances in which modem poetry has been indebted to the imagery of the present chapter, may be mentioned Shakespeare, "King John," act 3. sc. 1 Ac 3. sc. 4; "Macbeth," act 2. sc. 4.
III WILD IMPRECATION.
1. The day of his birth is in general terms execrated: "Let the day perish wherein I was born" (ver. 3); meaning, let it be erased from the calendar of existence, let it be filled with misery, buried in obscurity, and loaded with dishonour, or let it be blotted out from all remembrance. After which in detail he prays that it may be:
(1) Enshrouded in darkness (ver. 4); unillumined by the light of heaven, which imparts loveliness to all mundane things an imprecation conversely reminding us of the value of light.
(2) Abandoned by God (ver. 4), who, while interesting himself in all his other creatures, should never ask after it. "Job"s wish of darkness had done his day no great hurt, unless he had taken the eye of God from it also" (Caryl). God"s favour is the greatest blessing of the creature; and neither day nor man can be truly happy from which that favour is withdrawn.
(3) Reclaimed by death (ver. 5): "Let darkness and death shade claim it redeem it as a stray portion of their original kingdom, which had wandered into the realms of light, and carry it back to its primeval abode. Adhering to the metaphor which compares the light of day to a captive escaped from the prison-house of darkness, we may remember by whose power it was that the light was first liberated, (Gen_1:3) and whose hand it is that still directs it to the ends of the earth. (Job_37:3) We may note too that we have a better Kinsman than Job"s day had one who can buy us back, not like it, from light to darkness, but from darkness to light.
(4) Haunted by terrors: "Let the blackness of the day terrify it" (ver. 5); as if it were a living thing cowering and shrinking in abject horror before troops of black omens continually occurring on it, such as eclipses, unnatural obscurations, pestilential vapours, dark storm-clouds; meaning, let it be a day to inspire terror in all beholders. The human soul is easily alarmed by unusual phenomena; but why should it when God is in them? (Psa_97:1-5)
2. The night of his conception he likewise anathematizes in general terms (ver. 3); after which, personifying it, he measures out for it too a series of detailed imprecations, imploring that it might be:
(1) Excluded from the calendar; being overtaken by the surging waves of primal darkness, seized and carried back upon its ebbing tide to "chaos and old night," so that it should never join in the choral procession of the days and months that compose the year (ver. 6) a foolish curse, since the blotting out of the night could have no effect upon his sorrow.
(2) Destitute of gladness; sitting in solitary, unrelieved gloom, nothing living and rejoicing in life coming from its womb, while other nights around it experience a parent"s joy, and ring with birthday rejoicing" (ver. 7) a cruel curse, which sought to transfer his own misery to others.
(3) Cursed by enchanters, those who by their incantations can bring calamities on days otherwise propitious, rousing up leviathan (whether the crocodile, as the emblem of evil, or the dragon, i.e. the constellation of the serpent, as the enemy of the sun and moon, vide Exposition) to swallow it up (ver. 8) a superstitious curse, showing that good men are not always so enlightened as they should be.
(4) Doomed to darkness; always trembling on the verge of daylight, but never beholding the eyelids of the dawn (ver. 9) a presumptuous curse, since it thought to arrest a divinely appointed ordinance.
IV ASTOUNDING SELFISHNESS.
1. Thinking nothing of the happiness of others.
(1) Neither of his mother"s joy in his birth, who doubtless rejoiced over his advent into life, as Sarah did over Isaac"s, as Elisabeth did over John"s, and as every mother worthy of the name does over her babe"s; who probably, in the exultation of the moment, named him Job ("Joyous"), and experienced a fresh thrill of gladness every time she paused to note his opening manhood and his ripening piety; of all which she would have been bereft had Job not been born.
(2) Nor of the interest of others in his birthday, not, perhaps, because it was his, but because it was their own, or their children"s, or their parents", or their friends"; and why should they have all their happiness blighted because Job counted it a terrible misfortune that he had been ushered into life?
2. Thinking continually upon the misery of himself. The sole reason for his tremendous imprecation is the tact that on that particular day (and night) he had entered on his miserable career of existence. Suffering and sorrow, which are sent, and supposed, to render men sympathetic, not unfrequently result in selfishness, especially when conjoined with impatience, which is "ordinarily a great ponderer of griefs, because they are ours, little weighing the troubles of others" (Hutcheson).
V RASHNESS APPROACHING TO WICKEDNESS.
1. Its extenuations. Much to be ascribed to
(1) the emotional nature of Orientals;
(2) the comparatively unenlightened age in which Job lived;
(3) the extreme severity, multiplicity, and continuance of his troubles; and
(4) the provocation he may have received from the reproachful and suspicious looks of his friends.
2. Its aggravations. With every disposition to palliate Job"s offence, it is impossible to acquit him of sin; for
(1) he immoderately indulged his sorrow, which, though natural in itself, and at times becoming, and even sanctioned by religion, should yet never be permitted to exceed; (1Co_7:30)
(2) he overstepped the bounds of propriety in speech, employing phrases and terms full of passion as well as force, whereas saints should exercise restraint upon their tongues as well as tempers; (Psa_141:3 Col_4:6 Tit_2:8)
(3) he used the language of imprecation, which became not a good man, (Rom_12:14) and was a frequent mark of bad men; (Psa_10:7 Psa_109:18)
(4) if he cursed not God, he execrated God"s gift, his birthday, thus showing himself guilty of presumption in denouncing what God had blessed, (Gen_1:28 Psa_127:3) and of ingratitude in despising what God had bestowed, viz. life; (Gen_2:7 Act_17:28)
(5) he did all this knowingly and deliberately; (Job_3:1) and
(6) without regard to the interests of others.
Learn:
1. That a good man may stand long, and yet at length show symptoms off ailing. "Be not high-minded, but fear.
2. It is specially to be deplored when great gifts are employed for sinful purposes. Upon every talent should be inscribed, "Holiness to the Lord!
3. That the tongue is a world of iniquity when it is set on fire of hell "Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth!
4. That every creature of God is good, and to be received with thanksgiving; even birthdays, for which saints should bless God while they live.
5. That though sins may be palliated, they still require to be pardoned; excuses do not cancel guilt.
6. That from the greatest depth of wickedness into which a child of God can fall, he may ultimately be recovered. "The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin.
HOMILIES BY E. JOHNSON Vers. 1-26. The eloquence of grief.
This book, so entirely true to nature, presents here one of the darkest moods of the grief-stricken heart. The first state is that of paralyzed silence, dumbness, inertia. Were this to continue, death must ensue. Stagnation will be fatal. The currents of thought and feeling must in some way be set flowing in their accustomed channels, as in the beautiful little poem of Tennyson on the mother suddenly bereaved of her warrior-lordAll her maidens, wondering, said, She must weep or she must die.
A period of agitation ensues when the mind resumes its natural functions; and the first mood that succeeds to silent prostration is that of bitter resentment and complaint. As we hail the irritability of a patient who has been deadly sick as the sign of returning convalescence, so we may look upon this petulance of grief when it finds at length a voice. We do not blame; we pity, and are tender towards the irritable invalid whose heart we know to be in its depth patient and true; and he who knows the heart better than we do is forbearing with those wild cries which suffering may wring from even constant and faithful bosoms like Job"s. We may read these words of passion with consideration if God can listen to them without rebuke. There are three turns in the thought here expressed.
I THE SPIRIT OF MAN IN REVOLT FROM LIFE. Curses on the day of his birth. (Ver. 1-10) There seems to be some reference to the ancient belief, which we find in later times among the Romans, in unlucky or ill-starred days. Such a day, to the sufferers present feeling, must have been the day of his birth. But he will learn better by-and-by. He cannot see things rightly through the present medium of pain. True religion teaches us the Christian religion above all that no "black" days are sent us from him who causes his sun to shine on the evil and the good. It is only ill deeds that make ill days. We have met with Job"s complaint again and again in different forms. Men and women have complained that they were brought into the world without their consent being asked, and sometimes passionately exclaim, "I wish I had never been born!" Let us admit what our calm and healthy judgment dictates these feelings are morbid and transitory; and they are partial, because they represent only one, and that an extreme, mood of the ever-changing mind. We must take our morning, not our midnight, moods if we would know the truth about ourselves. The instinct which leads us to keep birthdays with joy and mutual congratulation should instruct us in our debt of thankfulness: "Thanks that we were men!
II THE IRRATIONALITY OF DESPAIR. (Vers. 11-19) But such wishes against the inevitable and for the impossible, the mind, even in the paroxysm of despair, feels to be absurd. It sinks to a degree less irrational in the next wish that an early death had prevented all this misery. Would that a frost had nipped the just-blown flower (vers. 11, 12)! Yet this mood is only a shade less unreasonable than the former. For does not the instinct which leads us all to speak of death in infancy and early childhood as "untimely, premature," rebuke this fretfulness, and witness to the truth again that life is a good? And does not the common aspiration after "length of days," so marked in the Old Testament, supply another argument in the same direction? Job will yet live to smile, from out of the depths of a serene old age, at these passionate clamours of a turbulent grief. Again, he passes into the contemplation of death with pleasure, with a deep craving for its rest. He describes, in simple, beautiful language, that final earthly resort, where agitated brains and restless hearts find at last peace (vers. 17-19). Such a sentiment, again, is common to the experience of suffering hearts, is deeply embedded in the poetry of the world. But how far more common and frequent the happy, healthy mood which finds a zest and relish in the mere sense of existence, in the simple, natural pleasures of every day! The longing for the rest of the grave is the mood of intense weariness and disease; and it is counteracted by the mood of restored health, which longs for activity, even in heaven. Well has that poet, who has entered so deeply into all the phases of modern sadness, sung"Whatever crazy Sorrow saith, No life that breathes with human breath Hath ever truly longed for death. life whereof our nerves are scant; Oh, life, not death, for which we pant; More life and fuller, that we want.
III INTERROGATION OF LIFE"S MYSTERIES. (Vers. 20-26) Once more, from longing for death, the distressed mind of the sufferer passes to impatient questioning. Why should life, if it is to be given to any, be given to sufferers who desire death? why should it be given to him who can find no rest, who is ever in dread of fresh woes? This complaint, again, is natural, but it is not wise. We are impatient of pain; we should otherwise have no quarrel with the mystery of being. But pain is a great fact in the constitution of the world; it is there; it is there evidently by Divine appointment; it cannot be glozed over nor explained away. The wisdom of piety is in reconciling ourselves to it as the dispensation of God, in submitting to it as his will, supporting it with patience. Then, "though no affliction for the present be joyous, but grievous, yet afterward it will yield the peaceable fruit of righteousness". (Heb_12:11) In hope let us"Strain through years To catch the far-off interest of tears.
To the question of Job the answer is Suffering is the signet of a majestic being. The light of eternity, falling athwart our tears, forms a rainbow prophetic of our glorious destiny. But the final and most significant of all answers is the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. There is the union of highest life with extremest suffering. Born to suffer, and by suffering to be made perfect, the Lord Jesus Christ supplies for them that trust in him a power by which they can rise out of the mysterious darkness of pain, believing that what is tried, even as by fire, shall be found unto praise and honour and glory at his appearing. The study of this paroxysm of extreme pain of mind will be instructive if it help us to govern any similar moods which may arise in our own minds.
LESSONS.
1. There is a natural and precious relief from mental pain in words, "Poor breathing orators of miseries! Let them have scope; though what they do impart Help nothing else, yet they do ease the heart.
1. God, our gracious Father, is not offended by our sincerity. Greater than our hearts, he knows all things. This book and many of the psalms teach us a childlike piety by repeating words in which sufferers poured forth all their complaints as well as thanksgivings into the ear of him who misunderstands nothing.
2. There is an exaggeration in all the moods of depression. We are prone to overstate the ills of life, and to forget the numberless hours of joy in which we have instinctively thanked God for the blessing of existence.
3. The very intensity and exaggeration of such moods point forward to a reaction. They will not continue long in the course of nature. God has mercifully so constructed this fine mechanism of body and mind that these extremes bring their own remedy. Patience, then. The hour is darkest that is nearest the dawn. "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. J.
HOMILIES BY R. GREEN Vers. 1-12. Human infirmity revealed in deep affliction.
Frail is the heart of man. With all its heroism, its endurance and power, yet the stout heart yields and the brave spirit is cowed. The strongest bends beneath the heavy pressure. But if the human life is to be truthfully presented, its failures as well as its excellences must be set forth. It is an evidence that the writer is attempting an impartial statement, and in the midst of his poetical representations is not led away to mere extravagance and exaggeration in depicting the qualities of the righteous man. Job"s strength of heart receives a shock. He is in the whirlpool of suffering and sorrow. He will recover himself in time; but for the present he is as one who has lost his balance. Let it not be forgotten how severe the strain upon him is. His possessions have been torn from him; his family stricken down by death; his body is the seat of a fierce and foul disease; his friends are powerless to help him. No wonder that "his grief was very great." Out of that grief springs his wail of complaint the cry of a spirit overburdened. This is an instance of what may escape from the lips of a strong and good man under the pressure of unusual affliction. In judging the cry of sorrow or forming our estimate of the character of him who raises it, we must remember
I THAT IT DOES NOT ACCURATELY REPRESENT THE UTTERANCE OF A CALM UNBIASED JUDGMENT. The sufferer is so liable to be unmanned at such an hour. There is too vivid a perception of the pains of life for the cry to be an accurate judgment on life itself.
II THAT IT IS THE EXPRESSION OF THE SOUL"S FEELINGS IN THE EXTREMITY OF ITS CIRCUMSTANCES. And although the true test of strength is in an ability to bear the heaviest pressure, yet that perfection of virtue by which the severest strain can be borne with calmness is only an uncommon experience; if, indeed, it can ever be found but in the Perfect One.
III THE INHERENT HUMAN FRAILTY. In this instance Job, "the perfect man and upright," falls behind the one absolute Example of patient endurance of the severest sufferings. Job, judged by the ordinary standard of human life, must be pronounced a model of patient endurance. The inherent weakness, the true mark of humanity, is apparent here. The world needed one "greater than Job" as its typical Example of patience.
IV But in all we may also learn THE USELESSNESS OF THAT CRY OF SORROW WHICH DEMANDS THE IMPOSSIBLE. In quietness and self-composure Job would not have cried thus. Reason is not always supreme. In moments of great suffering her authority is assailed, impaired, even sometimes lost.
In our judgment upon the cries of our frail brethren, we must, therefore, extend our utmost charity, make every allowance for the extreme conditions of which they are the expressions; and in our own habit of life accustom ourselves so to receive our minor afflictions that we may be tutored to comport ourselves rightly under the extremest pressure. R.G.
The curse of despair.
Job had endured bravely up to this moment. But when his courage broke down his despair swept all before it like an avalanche. Existence itself then seemed only a curse, and Job thought it a matter of regret that he had ever been brought into the world. In his despair he cursed the day of his birth.
I THE CAUSES OF THE CURSE. Job was no mere dyspeptic pessimist. His utterance of despair was not simply bred from the gloom of a discontented mind. Nor was he a hasty, impatient man who rebelled against the first sign of opposition to his will. The curse was wrung out of him by a most terrible conjunction of circumstances.
1. Unparalleled calamities. He had lost nearly all not property only, but children; not outside things only, but health and strength. He was bereft of almost everything in the world that promised to make life dear. Why then, should he value it any longer?
2. Long brooding over trouble. Job did not speak in haste. For seven days he had been sitting dumb with his three silent companions dumb, but not unconscious. What an array of thoughts must have passed through his mind while he thus suppressed all utterance! Benumbed at first, perhaps, his mind must have gradually roused itself to take in all the truth. Thus he had time to realize it. Nothing is worse than to suffer without being able to do anything to meet and conquer our trouble. Action is a powerful antidote to despair. Inaction intensifies pain. Thought and imagination add tremendous horrors of the mind to the greatest external and bodily troubles.
3. Sympathy. The kind presence of his friends broke down Job"s self-restraint. Men can bear in solitude with calmness; but sympathy opens the wells of emotion. This is best, for the heart that does not let out its pent-up feelings will break with concealed agony.
II THE CHARACTER OF THE CURSE.
1. Its bitterness. Satan said, "Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life". (Job_2:4) Now Job unconsciously answers the superficial word of the accuser, though from an unexpected point of view. Life itself may become so cruel as to be not worth living, as to be a curse rather than a blessing. But the trouble must indeed be great that can thus conquer and reverse a primary instinct of nature. The exceeding bitterness of future punishment will be that the life which has become dead, and yet which is not unconscious, must still be endured.
2. Its humiliation. Job cursed his day, only his day; he did not curse his God, nor the universe. He did not vent his agony in rage against the whole order of things. He confined it to his own miserable existence. At worst he only complained that he had been brought into being; he did not complain that the general order of the world was unjust. Here is a token of humility, patience, self-control. Weak sufferers rail against all things in earth and heaven. They take their experience as a sign of universal mismanagement. It is, indeed, difficult not to judge the universe by our own feelings.
3. Its mistake. Job"s despair was very excusable. Yet it was an error. It was an outbreak of impatience, though sadly provoked and bravely limited. No man is able to judge of the worth of his own life. The life which is miserable to its owner may yet be serving some high Divine purpose, may yet be a blessing to mankind. This was the case with Job"s. We cannot know the use and value of life till we see it as a finished whole and from the other side of the grave. W.F.A.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On v1 After this opened Job his month, and cursed his…
Job_3:1-26
After this opened Job his month, and cursed his day.
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The peril of impulsive speech
In regard to this chapter, containing the first speech of Job, we may remark that it is impossible to approve the spirit which it exhibits, or to believe that it was acceptable to God. It laid the foundation for the reflections--many of them exceedingly just--in the following chapters, and led his friends to doubt whether such a man could be truly pious. The spirit which is manifested in this chapter is undoubtedly far from that calm submission which religion should have produced, and from that which Job had before evinced. That he was, in the main, a man of eminent holiness and patience, the whole book demonstrates; but this chapter is one of the conclusive proofs that he was not absolutely free from imperfection. We may learn--
1. That even eminently good men sometimes give utterance to sentiments which are a departure from the spirit of religion, and which they will have occasion to regret. Here there was a language of complaint, and a bitterness of expression, which religion cannot sanction, and which no pious man, on reflection, would approve.
2. We see the effect of heavy affliction on the mind. It sometimes becomes overwhelming. It is so great that all the ordinary barriers against impatience are swept away. The sufferer is left to utter language of murmuring, and there is the impatient wish that life was closed, or that he had not existed.
3. We are not to infer that, because a man in affliction makes use of some expressions which we cannot approve, and which are not sanctioned by the Word of God, that therefore he is not a good man. There may be true piety, yet it may be far from perfection; there may be a general submission to God, yet the calamity may be so overwhelming as to overcome the usual restraints on our corrupt and fallen nature; and when we remember how feeble our nature is at best, and how imperfect is the piety of the holiest of men, we should not harshly judge him who is left to express impatience in his trials or who gives utterance to sentiments different from those which are sanctioned in the Word of God. There has been but one model of pure submission on earth--the Lord Jesus Christ. And after the contemplation of the best of men in their trials we can see that there is imperfection in them, and that if we would survey absolute perfection in suffering we must go to Gethsemane and Calvary.
4. Let us not make the expressions used by Job in this chapter our model in suffering. Let us not suppose that because he used such language, therefore we may also. Let us not infer that because they are found in the Bible, that therefore they are right; or that because he was an unusually holy man, that it would be proper for us to use the same language that he does. The fact that this book is a part of the inspired truth of revelation does not make such language right. All that inspiration does in such a case is to secure an exact record of what was actually said; it does not, of necessity, sanction it, any more than an accurate historian can be supposed to approve all that he records. There may be important reasons why it should be preserved, but he who makes the record is not answerable for the truth or propriety of what is recorded. The narrative is true; the sentiment may be false. (Albert Barnes.)
Good men not always at their best
1. The holiest person in this life doth not always keep in the same frame of holiness. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? This was the language we lately heard; but now cursing--certainly his spirit had been in a more holy frame, more sedate and quiet, than now it was. At the best in this life we are but imperfect; yet at some time we are more imperfect than we are at another.
2. Great sufferings may fill the mouths of holiest persons with great complainings.
3. Satan, with his utmost power and policy, with his strongest temptations and assaults, can never fully attain his ends upon the children of God. What was it that the devil undertook for? was it not to make Job curse his God? and yet when he had done his worst, and spent his malice upon him, he could but make Job curse his day,--this was far short of what Satan hoped.
4. God doth graciously forget and pass by the distempered speeches and bitter complainings of His servants under great afflictions. (J. Caryl.)
Good men weakened by calamities
The calamities and the suffering have wrought upon the weakened man. Depressed in spirit, perplexed in mind, in great bodily pain, Job opens his mouth and lifts up his voice. Great suffering generates great passions, and great passions are oft irrepressible, and hence the danger of extravagant speech. Better, says Trapp, if Job had kept his lips still. Surely that were impossible in an human being! One, and only One, was silent as a sheep before her shearers is dumb. Brooks says, When Gods hand is on our back our hand should be on our mouth. (H. E. Stone.)
Mistaken speech
Jobs tongue is loosened and his words are many. And what other form of speech was so true to his inmost feeling as the form which is known as malediction? The speech is but one sentence, and it rushes from a soul that is momentarily out of equipoise. Our friends often draw out of us the very worst that is in us. We best comment upon such words by repeating them, by studying the probable tone in which they were uttered. Thank God for this man, who in prosperity has uttered every thought appropriate to grief, and has given anguish a new costume of expression.
1. Notice how terrible, after all, is Satanic power. Look at Job if you would see how much the devil can, under Divine permission, do to human life. Perhaps it was well that, in one instance at least, we should see the devil at his worst.
2. See what miracles may be wrought in human experience. In Jobs malediction, existence was felt to be a burden; but existence was never meant to be a heavy weight. It was meant to be a joy, a hope, a rehearsal of music and service of a quality and range now inconceivable. But under Satanic agency even existence is felt to be an intolerable burden. Even this miracle can be wrought by Satan. He can turn our every faculty into a heavy calamity. He can so play upon our nerves as to make us feel that feeling is intolerable. But the speech of Job is full of profound mistakes, and the mistakes are only excusable because they were perpetrated by an unbalanced mind. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Infirmity appearing
At the ebb. As soon as the tide turned, numbers of crows and jackdaws came down upon the shore. While the beautiful waves were splashing over the sand there was no room for these black visitors; but as soon as the waters left, the harvest of these scavengers began. It seemed as though they must have carried watches, so well did they know the time of the receding tides. When the tide of grace runs low, how infirmities come upon us! If the tide of joy ebbs, the black birds of discontent soon appear, while doubts and fears always make their appearance if faith sinks low. (Footsteps of Truth.)
Defect in the best of men
Life at its best has a crack in it. Somehow the trail of the serpent is all over it. The most perfect man is imperfect, the most innocent man has his weak point. The infant Achilles in the Greek legend is dipped in the waters of the Styx, and the touch of the wave makes him invulnerable; but the water has not touched the heel by which his mother held him, and to that vulnerable heel the deathly arrow finds its way. Siegfried, in the Nibelungen Lied, bathes in the dragons blood, and it has made him, too, invulnerable; but, unknown to him, a lime tree leaf has fluttered down upon his back, and into the vital spot where the blood has not touched his skin the murderers dagger smites. Everything in the Icelandic Saga has sworn not to injure Balder, the brightest and most beloved of all the northern gods; but the insignificant mistletoe has not been asked to take the oath, and by the mistletoe he dies. These are the dim, sad allegories by which the world indicates that even the happiest man cannot be all happy, nor the most invincible altogether safe, nor the best altogether good. (Dean Farrar.)
Jobs distemper
Albeit Jobs weakness do thus for a time break forth, when his reason and experience are at under, and he is sensible of nothing but pain and sorrow, yet he doth not persist in this distemper, nor is it the only thing that appears in the furnace, but he hath much better purpose afterward in the behalf of God. And therefore, as in a battle men do not judge of affairs by what may occur in the heat of the conflict, wherein parties may retire and fall on again, but by the issue of the fight; so Job is not to be judged by those fits of distemper, seeing he recovered out of them at last; those violent fits do serve to demonstrate the strength of grace in him which prevailed at last over them all.
1. There are, in the most subdued child of God, strong corruptions ready to break forth in trial. The best of men ought to be sensible that they have, by nature, an evil heart of unbelief, even when they are strong in faith; that they have lukewarmness under their zeal, passion under their meekness.
2. Albeit natural corruptions may lurk long, even in the furnace of affliction, yet long and multiplied temptations will bring it forth.
(1) Every exercise and trial will not be a trial to every man, nor an irritation to every corruption within him.
(2) The length and continuance of a trial is a new trial, and may discover that which the simple trial doth not reach.
(3) When men get leisure in cold blood to reflect and pore upon their case it will prove more grievous than at first it doth.
(4) When men are disappointed of what they expect under trouble (as Job was of his friends comfort), it will grieve them more than if they, in sobriety, had expected no such thing. Doctrine--The Lord, in judging of the grace and integrity of His followers, doth afford many grains of allowance, and graciously passeth over much weakness, wherein they do not approve themselves. (George Hutcheson.)
Job cursing his day
How can Job be set up with so much admiration for a mirror of patience, who makes such bitter complainings, and breaks out into such distempered passions? He seems to be so far from patience that he wants prudence; so far from grace, that he wants reason itself and good nature; his speeches report him mad or distracted, breaking the bounds of modesty and moderation, striking that which had not hurt him, and striking that which he could not hurt--his birthday. Some prosecute the impatience of Job with much impatience, and are over-passionate against Jobs passion. Most of the Jewish writers tax him at the least as bordering on blasphemy, if not blaspheming. Nay, they censure him as one taking heed to, and much depending upon, astrological observations, as if mans fate or fortune were guided by the constellations of heaven, by the sight and aspect of the planets in the day of his nativity. Others carry the matter so far, on the other hand, altogether excusing and, which is more, commending, yea applauding Job, in this act of cursing his day. They make this curse an argument of his holiness, and these expostulations as a part of his patience, contending--
1. That they did only express (as they ought) the suffering of his sensitive part, as a man, and so were opposite to Stoical apathy, not to Christian patience.
2. That he spake all this not only according to the law of sense, but with exact judgment, and according to the law of soundest reason. I do not say but that Job loved God, and loved Him exceedingly all this while, but whether we should so far acquit Job I much doubt. We must state the matter in the middle way. Job is neither rigidly to be taxed of blasphemy or profaneness, nor totally to be excused, especially not flatteringly commended, for this high complaint.
It must be granted that Job discovered much frailty and infirmity, some passion and distemper, in this complaint and curse; yet notwithstanding, we must assert him for a patient man, and there are five things considerable for the clearing and proof of this assertion.
1. Consider the greatness of his suffering: his wound was very deep and deadly, his burden was very heavy, only not intolerable.
2. Consider the multiplicity of his troubles. They were great and many--many little afflictions meeting together make a great one; how great, then, is that which is composed of many great ones!
3. Consider the long continuance of these great and many troubles: they continued long upon him--some say they continued divers years upon him.
4. Consider this, that his complainings and acts of impatience were but a few; but his submission and acts of meekness, under the hand of God, were very many.
5. Take this into consideration, that though he did complain, and complain bitterly, yet he recovered out of those complainings. He was not overcome with impatience, though some impatient speeches came from him; he recalls what he had spoken, and repents for what he had done. Look not alone upon the actings of Job, when he was in the height and heat of the battle; look to the onset, he was so very patient in the beginning, though vehemently stirred, that Satan had not a word to say. Look to the end, and you cannot say but Job was a patient man, full of patience--a mirror of patience, if not a miracle of patience; a man whose face shined with the glory of that grace, above all the children of men. Learn--
(1) The holiest person in this life doth not always keep in the same frame of holiness.
(2) Great sufferings may fill the mouths of holiest persons with great complainings,
(3) God doth graciously pass by and forget the distempered speeches and bitter complainings of His servants under great afflictions. (Joseph Caryl.)
The speech of Job and its misapprehensions
Jobs speech is full of profound mistakes, which are only excusable because they were perpetrated by an unbalanced mind. The eloquent tirade proceeds upon the greatest misapprehensions. Yet we must be merciful in our judgment, for we ourselves have been unbalanced, and we have not spared the eloquence of folly in the time of loss, bereavement, and great suffering We may not have made the same speech in one set deliverance, going through it paragraph by paragraph, but if we could gather up all reproaches, murmurings, complainings, which we have uttered, and set them down in order, Jobs short chapter would be but a preface to the black volume indited by our atheistic hearts. Job makes the mistake that personal happiness is the test of Providence. Job did not take the larger view. What, a different speech he might have made! He might have said, Though I am in these circumstances now, I was not always in them: weeping endureth for a night, joy cometh in the morning: I will not complain of one bitter winter day when I remember all the summer season in which I have sunned myself at the very gate of heaven. Yet he might not have said this, for it lies not within the scope of human strength. We must not expect more even from Christian men than human nature in its best moods can exemplify. I know that Christian men are mocked when they complain; they are taunted when they say their souls are in distress; there are those who stand up and say, Where is now thy God? But the best of men, as one has quaintly said, are but men at the best. God Himself knoweth our frame, He remembereth that we are dust; He says, They are a wind which cometh for a little time, and then passeth away; their life is like a vapour, curling up into the blue air for one little moment, and then dying off as to visibleness as if it had never been. The Lord knoweth our days, our faculties, our sensibilities, our capacity of suffering, and the judgment must be with Him. Then Job committed the mistake of supposing that circumstances are of more consequence than life. If the sun had shone, if the fields and vineyards had returned plentifully, answering the labour of the sower and the planter with great abundance, who knows whether the soul had not gone down in the same equal proportion? It is a hard thing to keep both soul and body at an equal measure. How hardly--with what straining--shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of heaven. Who knows what Job might have said if the prosperity had been multiplied sevenfold? Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked. Where is the man who could bear always to swelter under the sun warmth of prosperity? Where is the man that does not need now and again to be smitten, chastened, almost lacerated, cut in two by Gods whip, lest he forget to pray? Let suffering be accounted a seal of sonship, if it come as a test rather than as a penalty. Where a man has justly deserved the suffering, let him not comfort himself with its highest religious meaning, but let him accept it as a just penalty. But where it has overtaken him at the very altar, where it has cut him down when he was on his way to heaven with pure heart and pure lips, then let him say, This is the Lords doing, and He means to enlarge my manhood, to increase the volume of my being, and to develop His own image and likeness according to the mysteriousness of His own way: blessed be the name of the Lord! Why has Job fallen into this strain? He has omitted the word which made his first speech noble. In the first speech the word Lord occurs three times, and the word Lord never occurs in this speech, for purely religious purposes; he would only have God invoked that God might carry out his own feeble prayer for destruction and annihilation; the word God is only associated with complaint and murmuring, as, for example--Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it (Job_3:4); and again: Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged in? (Job_3:23) This is not the Lord of the first speech; this is but invoking Omnipotence to do a puny miracle: it is not making the Lord a high tower, and an everlasting refuge into which the soul can pass, and where it can forever be at ease. So we may retain the name of God, and yet have no Lord--living, merciful, and mighty, to whom our souls can flee as to a refuge. It is not enough to use the term God; we must enter into the spirit of its meaning, and find in God not almightiness only, but all-mercifulness, all-goodness, all-wisdom. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Yet we must not be hard upon Job, for there have been times in which the best of us has had no heaven, no altar, no Bible, no God. If those times had endured a little longer our souls had been overwhelmed; but there came a voice from the Excellent Glory, saying, For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee. Praised forever be the name of the delivering God! (Joseph Parker, D. D.)
The maddening force of suffering
A mans language must be construed according to the mood of his soul. Here we have sufferings forcing a human soul--
I. To the use of extravagant language.
1. Great sufferings generate great passions in the soul. Hope, fear, love, anger, and other sentiments may remain in the mind during the period of ease and comfort, so latent and quiescent as to crave no expression. But let suffering come, and they will rush into passions that shake and convulse the whole man. There are elements in every human heart, now latent, that suffering can develop into terrific force.
2. Great passions often become irrepressible. Some men have a wonderful power of restraining their feelings. But passion sometimes rises to such a pitch in the soul that no man, however great his self-control, is able to repress. Like the volcanic fires, it will break through all the mountains that lie upon it, and flame up to the heavens.
3. When great passions become irrepressible they express themselves extravagantly. The flood that has broken through its obstructions does not roll on at once in calm and silent flow, but rushes and foams. He speaks not in calm prose, but in tumultuous poetry.
II. To deplore the fact of his existence.
1. The fact that he existed at all.
2. That, having existed, he did not die at the very dawn of his being. Incidentally, I cannot but remark how good is God in making provision for our support before we enter on the stage of life. The fact that suffering can thus make existence intolerable suggests the following truths--
(1) Annihilation is not the worst of evils. Better not to be at all than to be in misery; better to be quenched than to burn. Another truth suggested is--
(2) Desire for death is no proof of genuine religion. Another truth suggested is--
(3) Hell must be an overwhelmingly terrible condition of existence. Hell, the Bible tells us, is a condition of excruciating and hopeless suffering. There death is sought, but cannot be found.
III. Here is suffering urging a man to hail the condition of the dead.
1. As a real rest. Lying still in unconscious sleep, beyond the reach of any disturbing power. How profound is the rest of the grave! The loudest thunders cannot penetrate the ear of the dead. He looked at death--
2. As a common rest. Kings and counsellors, princes and paupers, tyrants and their victims, the illustrious and obscure--all are there together. The state of the dead, as here described, suggests two practical thoughts.
(1) The transitoriness of all worldly distinctions. The flowers that appear in our fields at this season of the year vary greatly in form, size, hues. Some are far more imposing and beautiful than others; but in a few weeks all the distinctions will be utterly destroyed. It is so in society. Great are the secular distinctions in this generation, but a century hence and the whole will be common dust. How egregiously absurd to be proud of mere secular distinctions.
(2) The folly of making corporeal interests supreme.
IV. Here is suffering urging a man to pry into the reasons of a miserable life. Has the great Author of existence any pleasure in the sufferings of His creatures? There are, no doubt, good reasons, reasons that we shall understand and appreciate ere long.
1. Great sufferings are often spiritually useful to the sufferer. They are storms to purify the dark atmosphere of his heart; they are bitter ingredients to make spiritually curative his cup of life. Suffering teaches man the evil of sin; for sin is the root of all anguish. Suffering develops the virtues--patience, forbearance, resignation. Suffering tests the character; it is fire that tries the moral metal of the soul.
2. Great sufferings are often spiritually useful to the spectator. The view of a suffering human creature tends to awaken compassion, stimulate benevolence, and excite gratitude. From this subject we learn--
(1) The utmost power that the devil is capable of exerting on man.
(2) The strength of genuine religion. (Homilist.)
The cry from the depths
The outburst of Jobs speech falls into three lyrical strophes, the first ending at the tenth verse, the second at the nineteenth, the third closing with the chapter.
1. Job opened his mouth, and cursed his day. In a kind of wild, impossible revision of Providence, and reopening of questions long settled, he assumes the right of heaping denunciations on the day of his birth. He is so fallen, so distraught, and the end of his existence appears to have come in such profound disaster, the face of God as well as of man frowning on him, that he turns savagely on the only fact left to strike at--his birth into the world. But the whole strain is imaginative. His revolt is unreason, not impiety, either against God or his parents. He does not lose the instinct of a good man, one who keeps in mind the love of father and mother, and the intention of the Almighty, whom he still reveres. The idea is, Let the day of my birth be got rid of, so that no other come into being on such a day; let God pass from it--then He will not give life on that day. Mingled in this is the old-world notion of days having meanings and powers of their own. This day had proved malign--terribly bad!
2. In the second strophe cursing is exchanged for wailing, fruitless reproach of a long past day, for a touching chant in praise of the grave. If his birth had to be, why could he not have passed at once into the shades? The lament, though not so passionate, is full of tragic emotion. It is beautiful poetry, and the images have a singular charm for the dejected mind. The chief point, however, for us to notice is the absence of any thought of judgment. In the dim underworld, hid as beneath heavy clouds, power and energy are not. Existence has fallen to so low an ebb that it scarcely matters whether men were good or bad in this life, nor is it needful to separate them. It is a kind of existence below the level of moral judgment, below the level either of fear or joy.
3. The last portion of Jobs address begins with a note of inquiry. He strikes into eager questioning of heaven and earth regarding his state. What is he kept alive for? He pursues death with his longing as one goes into the mountain to seek treasure. And again, his way is hid, he has no future. God hath hedged him in on this side by losses, on that by grief; behind, a past mocks him, before is a shape which he follows, and yet dreads. It is indeed a horrible condition, this of the baffled mind to which nothing remains but its own gnawing thought, that finds neither reason of being nor end of turmoil, that can neither cease to question, nor find answer to inquiries that rack the spirit. There is energy enough, life enough to feel life a terror, and no more; not enough for any mastery even of stoical resolve. The power of self-consciousness seems to be the last injury--a Nessus shirt, the gift of a strange hate . . . Note that in his whole agony Job makes no motion towards suicide. The struggle of life cannot be renounced. (Robert A. Watson, D. D.)
Birth deplored
The Puritan mother of Samuel Mills, who, when her son, under the stress of morbid religious feeling, cried out, Oh, that I had never been born! said to him, My son, you are born, and you cannot help it, was more philosophical than he who says, I am, but I wish I were not. A philosophy that flies in the face of the existing and the inevitable forfeits its name. (T. T. Munger.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v1 Job 3
VI.
THE CRY FROM THE DEPTH
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Job 3
JOB SPEAKS
WHILE the friends of Job sat beside him that dreary week of silence, each of them was meditating in his own way the sudden calamities which had brought the prosperous emeer to poverty, the strong man to this extremity of miserable disease. Many thoughts came and were dismissed; but always the question returned, Why these disasters, this shadow of dreadful death? And for very compassion and sorrow each kept secret the answer that came and came again and would not be rejected. Meanwhile the silence has weighed upon the sufferer, and the burden of it becomes at length insupportable. He has tried to read their thoughts, to assure himself that grief alone kept them dumb, that when they spoke it would be to cheer him with kindly words, to praise and reinvigorate his faith, to tell him of Divine help that would not fail him in life or death. But as he sees their faces darken into inquiry first and then into suspicion, and reads at length in averted looks the thought they cannot conceal, when he comprehends that the men he loved and trusted hold him to be a transgressor and under the ban of God, this final disaster of false judgment is overwhelming. The man whom all circumstances appear to condemn, who is bankrupt, solitary, outworn with anxiety and futile efforts to prove his honour, if he have but one to believe in him, is helped to endure and hope. But Job finds human friendship yield like a reed. All the past is swallowed up in one tragical thought that, be a man what he may, there is no refuge for him in the justice of man: Everything is gone that made human society and existence in the world worth caring for. His wife, indeed, believes in his integrity, but values it so little that she would have him cast it away with a taunt against God. His friends, it is plain to see, deny it. He is suffering at Gods hand, and they are hardened against him. The iron enters into his soul.
True, it is the shame and torment of his disease that move him to utter his bitter lamentation. Yet the underlying cause of his loss of self-command and of patient confidence in God must not be missed. The disease has made life a physical agony; but he could bear that if still no cloud came between him and the face of God. Now these dark, suspicious looks which meet him every time he lifts his eyes, which he feels resting upon him even when he bows his head in the attempt to pray, make religion seem a mockery. And in pitiful anticipation of the doom to which they are silently driving him, he cries aloud against the life that remains. He has lived in vain. Would he had never been born!
In this first lyrical speech put into the mouth of Job there is an Oriental, hyperbolical strain, suited to the speaker and his circumstances. But we are also made to feel that calamity and dejection have gone near to unhinging his mind. He is not mad, but his language is vehement, almost that of insanity. It would be wrong, therefore, to criticise the words in a matter-of-fact way, and against the spirit of the book to try by the rules of Christian resignation one so tossed and racked, in the very throat of the furnace. This is a pious man, a patient man, who lately said, "Shall we receive joy at the hand of God, and shall we not receive affliction?" He seems to have lost all control of himself and plunges into wild untamed speech filled with anathemas, as one who had never feared God. But he is driven from self-possession. Phantasmal now is all that brave life of his as prince and as father, as a man in honour beloved of the Highest. Did he ever enjoy it? If he did, was it not as in a dream? Was he not rather a deceiver, a vile transgressor? His state befits that. Light and love and life are turned into bitter gall. "I lived," says one distressed like Job, "in a continual, indefinite, pining fear; tremulous, pusillanimous, apprehensive of I knew not what; it seemed as if the heavens and the earth were but boundless jaws of a devouring monster wherein I, palpitating, waited to be devoured Man is, properly speaking, based upon hope, he has no other possession but hope; this world of his is emphatically the Place of Hope." We see Job, "for the present, quite shut out from hope; looking not into the golden orient, but vaguely all round into a dim firmament pregnant with earthquake and tornado."
The poem may be read calmly. Let us remember that it came not calmly from the pen of the writer, but as the outburst of volcanic feeling from the deep centres of life. It is Job we hear; the language befits his despondency, his position in the drama. But surely it presents to us a real experience of one who, in the hour of Israels defeat and captivity, had seen his home swept bare, wife and children seized and tortured or borne down in the rush of savage soldiery, while he himself lived on, reduced in one day to awful memories and doubts as the sole consciousness of life. Is not some crisis like this with its irretrievable woes translated for us here into the language of Jobs bitter cry? Are we not made witnesses of a tragedy greater even than his?
"What is to become of us," asks Amiel, "when everything leaves us, health, joy, affections, when the sun seems to have lost its warmth, and life is stripped of all charm? Must we either harden or forget? There is but one answer, Keep close to duty, do what you ought, come what may." The mood of these words is not so devout as other passages of the same writer. The advice, however, is often tendered in the name of religion to the life weary and desolate; and there are circumstances to which it well applies. But a distracting sense of impotence weighed down the life of Job. Duty? He could do nothing. It was impossible to find relief in work; hence the fierceness of his words. Nor can we fail to hear in them a strain of impatience, almost of anger: "To the unregenerate Prometheus Vinctus of a man, it is ever the bitterest aggravation of his wretchedness that he is conscious of virtue, that he feels himself the victim not of suffering only, but of injustice. What then? Is the heroic inspiration we name Virtue but some passion, some bubble of the blood? Thus has the bewildered wanderer to stand, as so many have done, shouting question after question into the sibyl cave of Destiny, and receiving no answer but an echo. It is all a grim desert, this once fair world of his."
Job is already asserting to himself the reality of his own virtue, for he resents the suspicion of it. Indeed, with all the mystery of his affliction yet to solve, he can but think that Providence is also casting doubt on him. A keen sense of the favour of God had been his. Now he becomes aware that while he is still the same man who moved about in gladness and power, his life has a different look to others; men and nature conspire against him. His once brave faith-the Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away-is almost overborne. He does not renounce, but he has a struggle to save it. The subtle Divine grace at his heart alone keeps him from bidding farewell to God.
The outburst of Jobs speech falls into three lyrical strophes, the first ending at the tenth verse, the second at the nineteenth, the third closing with the chapter.
I.
"Job opened his mouth and cursed his day." In a kind of wild impossible revision of providence and reopening of questions long settled, he assumes the right of heaping denunciations on the day of his birth. He is so fallen, so distraught, and the end of his existence appears to have come in such profound disaster, the face of God as well as of man frowning on him, that he turns savagely on the only fact left to strike at, -his birth into the world. But the whole strain is imaginative. His revolt is unreason, not impiety either against God or his parents. He does not lose the instinct of a good man, one who keeps in mind the love of father and mother and the intention of the Almighty whom he still reveres. Life is an act of God: he would not have it marred again by infelicity like his own. So the day as an ideal factor in history or cause of existence is given up to chaos.
"That day, there!
Darkness be it.
Seek it not the High God from above;
And no light stream on it.
Darkness and the nether gloom reclaim it,
Encamp over it the clouds;
Scare it blacknesses of the day."
The idea is, Let the day of my birth be got rid of, so that no other come into being on such a day; let God pass from it-then He will not give life on that day. Mingled in this is the old world notion of days having meanings and powers of their own. This day had proved malign, terribly bad. It was already a chaotic day, not fit for a mans birth. Let every natural power of storm and eclipse draw it back to the void. The night too, as part of the day, comes under imprecation.
That night, there!
Darkness seize it,
Joy have it none among the days of the year,
Nor come into the numbering of months.
See! That night, be it barren;
No song-voice come to it:
Ban it, the cursers of day
Skilful to stir up leviathan.
Dark be the stars of its twilight,
May it long for the light-find none,
Nor see the eyelids of dawn.
The vividness here is from superstition, fancies of past generations, old dreams of a child race. Foreign they would be to the mind of Job in his strength; but in great disaster the thoughts are apt to fall back on these levels of ignorance and dim efforts to explain, omens and powers intangible. It is quite easy to follow Job in this relapse, half wilful, half for easing of his bosom. Throughout Arabia, Chaldaea, and India went a belief in evil powers that might be invoked to make a particular day one of misfortune. The leviathan is the dragon which was thought to cause eclipses by twining its black coils about the sun and moon. These vague undertones of belief ran back probably to myths of the sky and the storm, and Job ordinarily must have scorned them. Now, for the time, he chooses to make them serve his need of stormy utterance. If any who hear him really believe in magicians and their spells, they are welcome to gather through that belief a sense of his condition; or if they choose to feel pious horror, they may be shocked. He flings out maledictions, knowing in his heart that they are vain words.
Is it not something strange that the happy past is here entirely forgotten? Why has Job nothing to say of the days that shone brightly upon him? Have they no weight in the balance against pain and grief?
"The tempest in my mind
Doth from my senses take all feeling else
Save what beats there."
His mind is certainly clouded; for it is not vain to say that piety preserves the thought of what God once gave, and Job had himself spoken of it when his disease was young. At this point he is an example of what man is-when he allows the water floods to overflow him and the sad present to extinguish a brighter past. The sense of a wasted life is upon him, because he does not yet understand what the saving of life is. To be kind to others and to be happy in ones own kindness is not for man so great a benefit, so high a use of life, as to suffer with others and for them. What were the life of our Lord on earth and His death but a revelation to man of the secret he had never grasped and still but half approves? The Book of Job, a long, yearning cry out of the night, shows how the world needed Christ to shed His Divine light upon all our experiences and unite them in a religion of sacrifice and triumph. The book moves toward that reconciliation which only the Christ can achieve. As yet, looking at the sufferer here, we see that the light of the future has not dawned upon him. Only when he is brought to bay by the falsehoods of man, in the absolute need of his soul, will he boldly anticipate the redemption and fling himself for refuge on a justifying God.
II.
In the second strophe cursing is exchanged for wailing, fruitless reproach of a long past day for a touching chant in praise of the grave. If his birth had to be, why could he not have passed at once into the shades? The lament, though not so passionate, is full of tragic emotion. The phrases of it have been woven into a modern hymn and used to express what Christians may feel; but they are pagan in tone, and meant by the writer to embody the unhopeful thought of the race. Here is no outlook beyond the inanition of death, the oblivion and silence of the tomb. It is not the extreme of unfaith, but rather of weakness and misery.
Wherefore hastened the knees to meet me,
And why the breasts that I should suck?
For then, having sunk down, would I repose,
Fallen asleep there would be rest for me.
With kings and councillors of the earth
Who built them solitary piles;
Or with princes who had gold,
Who filled their houses with silver;
Or as a hidden abortion I had not been,
As infants who never saw light.
There the wicked cease from raging,
And there the outworn rest.
Together the prisoners are at ease,
Not hearing the call of the taskmaster.
Small and great are there the same,
The slave set free from his lord.
It is beautiful poetry, and the images have a singular charm for the dejected mind. The chief point, however, for us to notice is the absence of any thought of judgment. In the dim underworld, hid as beneath heavy clouds, power and energy are not. Existence has fallen to so low an ebb that it scarcely matters whether men were good or bad in this life, nor is it needful to separate them. For the tyrant can do no more harm to the captive, nor the robber to his victim. The astute councillor is no better than the slave. It is a kind of existence below the level of moral judgment, below the level either of fear or joy. From the peacefulness of this region none are excluded; as there will be no strength to do good there will be none to do evil. "The small and great are there the same." The stillness and calm of the dead body deceive the mind, willing in its wretchedness to be deceived.
When the writer put this chant into the mouth of Job, he had in memory the pyramids of Egypt and tombs, like those of Petra, carved in the lonely hills. The contrast is thus made picturesque between the state of Job lying in loathsome disease and the lot of those who are gathered to the mighty dead. For whether the rich are buried in their stately sepulchres, or the body of a slave is hastily covered with desert sand, all enter into one painless repose. The whole purpose of the passage is to mark the extremity of hopelessness, the mind revelling in images of its own decay. We are not meant to rest in that love of death from which Job vainly seeks comfort. On the contrary, we are to see him by and by roused to interest in life and its issues. This is no halting place in the poem, as it often is in human thought.
A great problem of Divine righteousness hangs unsolved. With the death of the prisoner and the down-trodden slave whose worn out body is left a prey to the vulture-with the death of the tyrant whose evil pride has built a stately tomb for his remains-all is not ended. Peace has not come. Rather has the unravelling of the tangle to begin. The All-righteous has to make His inquisition and deal out the justice of eternity. Modern poetry, however, often repeats in its own way the old-world dream, mistaking the silence and composure of the dead face for a spiritual deliverance:-
"The aching craze to live ends, and life glides
Lifeless-to nameless quiet, nameless joy.
Blessed Nirvana, sinless, stirless rest,
That change which never changes."
To Christianity this idea is utterly foreign, yet it mingles with some religious teaching, and is often to be found in the weaker sorts of religious fiction and verse.
III.
The last portion of Jobs address begins with a note of inquiry. He strikes into eager questioning of heaven and earth regarding his state. What is he kept alive for? He pursues death with his longing as one goes into the mountains to seek treasure. And again, his way is hid; he has no future. God hath hedged him in on this side by losses, on that by grief; behind a past mocks him, before is a shape which he follows and yet dreads.
"Wherefore gives He light to wretched men,
Life to the bitter in soul?
Who long for death; but no!
Search for it more than for treasures."
It is indeed a horrible condition, this of the baffled mind to which nothing remains but its own gnawing thought that finds neither reason of being nor end of turmoil, that can neither cease to question nor find answer to inquiries that rack the spirit. There is energy enough, life enough to feel life a terror, and no more; not enough for any mastery even of stoical resolve. The power of self-consciousness seems to be the last injury, a Nessus-shirt, the gift of a strange hate. "The real agony is the silence, the ignorance of the why and the wherefore, the Sphinx-like imperturbability which meets his prayers." This struggle for a light that will not come has been expressed by Matthew Arnold in his "Empedocles on Etna," a poem which may in some respects be named a modern version of Job:-
This heart will glow no more; thou art
A living man no more, Empedocles!
Nothing but a devouring flame of thought-
But a naked eternally restless mind
To the elements it came from
Everything will return-
Our bodies to earth,
Our blood to water,
Heat to fire,
Breath to air.
They were well born,
They will be well entombed-
But mind, but thought-
Where will they find their parent element
What will receive them, who will call them home?
But we shall still be in them and they in us
And we shall be unsatisfied as now;
And we shall feel the agony of thirst,
The ineffable longing for the life of life,
Baffled forever.
Thought yields no result; the outer universe is dumb and impenetrable. Still Job would revive if a battle for righteousness offered itself to him. He has never had to fight for God or for his own faith. When the trumpet call is heard he will respond; but he is not yet aware of hearing it.
The closing verses have presented considerable difficulty to interpreters, who on the one hand shrink from the supposition that Job is going back on his past life of prosperity and finding there the origin of his fear, and on the other hand see the danger of leaving so significant a passage without definite meaning. The Revised Version puts all the verbs of the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth verses into the present tense, and Dr. A.B. Davidson thinks translation into the past tense would give a meaning "contrary to the idea of the poem." Now, a considerable interval had already elapsed from the time of Jobs calamities, even from the beginning of his illness, quite long enough to allow the growth of anxiety and fear as to the judgment of the world. Job was not ignorant of the caprice and hardness of men. He knew how calamity was interpreted; he knew that many who once bowed to his greatness already heaped scorn upon his fall. May not his fear have been that his friends from beyond the desert would furnish the last and in some respects most cutting of his sorrows?
"I have feared a fear; it has come upon me,
And that which I dread has come to me.
I have not been at ease nor quiet, nor have I had rest;
Yet trouble has come."
In his brooding soul, those seven days and nights, fear has deepened into certainty. He is a man despised. Even for those three his circumstances have proved too much. Did he imagine for a moment that their coming might relieve the pressure of his lot and open a way to the recovery of his place among men? The trouble is deeper than ever; they have stirred a tempest in his breast.
Note that in his whole agony Job makes no motion towards suicide. Arnolds Empedocles cries against life, flings out his questions to a dumb universe, and then plunges into the crater of Etna. Here, as at other points, the inspiration of the author of our book strikes clear between stoicism and pessimism, defiance of the world to do its worst and confession that the struggle is too terrible. The deep sense of all that is tragic in life, and, with this, the firm persuasion that nothing is appointed to man but what he is able to bear, together make the clear Bible note. It may seem that Jobs ejaculations differ little from the cry out of the "City of Dreadful Night,"
"Weary of erring in this desert, Life,
Weary of hoping hopes forever vain,
Weary of struggling in all sterile strife,
Weary of thought which maketh nothing plain,
I close my eyes and calm my panting breath
And pray to thee, O ever quiet Death,
To come and soothe away my bitter pain."
But the writer of the book knows what is in hand. He has to show how far faith may be pressed down and bent by the sore burdens of life without breaking. He has to give us the sense of a soul in the uttermost depth, that we may understand the sublime argument which follows, know its importance, and find our own tragedy exhibited, our own need met, the personal and the universal marching together to an issue. Suicide is no issue for a life, any more than universal cataclysm for the evolution of a world. Despair is no refuge. The inspired writer here sees so far, so clearly, that to mention suicide would be absurd. The struggle of life cannot be renounced. So much he knows by a spiritual instinct which anticipates the wisdom of later times. Were this book a simple record of fact, we have Job in a position far more trying than that of Saul after his defeat on Gilboa; but it is an ideal prophetic writing, a Divine poem, and the faith it is designed to commend saves the man from interfering by any deed of his with the will of God.
We are prepared for the vehement controversy that follows and the sustained appeal of the sufferer to that Power which has laid upon him such a weight of agony. When he breaks into passionate cries and seems to be falling away from all trust, we do not despair of him nor of the cause he represents. The intensity with which he longs for death is actually a sign and measure of the strong life that throbs within him, which yet will be led out into light and freedom and come to peace as it were in the very clash of revolt.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v1 Job_3:5. “Let the blackness of the day terrify it.”…
Notes
Job_3:5. “Let the blackness of the day terrify it.” Margin, “Let them terrify it as those who have a bitter day” The expression כִּמרִירֵי־יוֹם (chimrire-yom) gives rise to two classes of interpretations, according as the initial letter is regarded as a part of the noun, or as a particle. In the former case, it is best rendered “obscurations, or darkenings of the day:” from כָמַר (chamar), an unused root, signifying “to be dark, or blackened, as with heat.” So GESENIUS, who thinks the reference is to eclipses, always regarded by the ancients as portending calamities. The view also of BOCHART, NOTES, FAUSSET, ZÖCKLER, in “Lange,” &c. The first of the two nouns is thus regarded as an augmentative; the simple form כְמִירָא (chemira, from כְמַר chemar, “to be dark, or sad”), being applied in Syriac (Mat_16:3) to a dark and lowering sky. So SCOTT, who translates it “greatest sorrows,” and in his metrical version: “Boding signs from all the quartered sphere.” LEE classes it with a sort of superlative in Arabic words signifying colours, &c., formed by reduplicating the last radical letter, and occasionally introducing a long vowel; and so renders the expression “blackest things of the day”—blackest terrors. Of the earlier interpreters, JUNIUS and TREMELLIUS render the words: “Darkness of the day.” COCCEIUS: “Blacknesses of the day,”—dark, hot, pestilential vapours. PAGNINUS, VATABLUS, and PISCATOR: “Heats, or vapours, of the day.” The Tigurine translators: “Most burning heats of the dog-days.” Bishop HALL: “A continued darkness.” Among later expositors, GOOD has: “Blasts of noontide”—the simoom, or hot wind of the desert. FRY: “Black blasts of the day.” BOOTIIROYD: “Thunder-clouds, blackening the day.” JENOUR: “Black darkness by day.” CAREY and CONANT, after GESENIUS: “Darkenings of the day.” BERNARD: “Black vapours.” OLSHAUSEN, DILLMANN, and DELITZSCH: “Darknesses of the sun,” as from clouds. HERDER, viewing the expression figuratively: “Blackness of misfortune.” UMBREIT understands by it: “Magical incantations which darken the day.” GROTIUS and CODURCUS regard the first noun as used for כִמְרֵי (chimre) or chemarims, a name given in the Old Testament to certain idolatrous priests (Zep_1:4; Hos_10:5; 2Ki_23:5), and thus denoting “priests of the day,”—astrologers, who distinguish the character of days as lucky and unlucky, like the Roman “prefecti fastorum.”
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If the initial letter כ, however, be viewed not as a part of the noun, but as a particle, it may be regarded either as one of comparison, or of emphasis. In this case, the noun מְרִירֵי (merire) will be viewed as derived from מָרַר (marar) “to be bitter,” as in Deu_32:24. So the translators of the ancient versions appear to have understood the expression. The Septuagint has: “Let the day be cursed;” or, according to GRABE’S emendation: “Let the day be troubled.” The VULGATE: “Let the day be involved in bitterness.” The TARGUM, SYRIAC, and AQUILA: “As bitternesses of the day.” So MARTIN’S French: “As the day of those to whom life is bitter.” DIODATI’S Italian: “The bitterest days.” MERCER and MORUS, like our marginal reading: “As those bitter in days.” MUNSTER, after the Syriac: “The bitternesses of the day.” SEB. SCHMIDT: “As bitternesses of day,”—rather to be so called than day itself. SCHULTENS: “As it were, the bitter things of the day,”—viz., misfortunes. ROSENM ÜLLER: “According to the bitternesses of the day”—calamities which render a day black and ill-omened, as Amo_8:10. ADAM CLARKE: “The bitterness of a day.” YOUNG: “As the most bitter of days.” LE CLERC derives the word, as the Septuagint appears to have done, from אָרַר (arar) “to curse:” “as those who curse the day.”
Job_3:8. “Who are ready to raise up their mourning;” Margin: “A leviathan.” A clause which has also two classes of interprepretations, according as the noun לִוְיָתָן (livyathan) is regarded as derived from לָוָה (lavah) “to twist into folds,” and so meaning a serpent, or sea monster, as in all the ancient versions; or from לָיָה (layah) “to mourn,” and so denoting lamentation, as in our authorised version. Of the other two words in the clause, הָעֲתִידִים tha-’athidhim, from עָתַד (’athadh), unused in Hebrew but found in Chaldaic; in the Pael form, עַתֵּד (attedh) “to appoint or prepare,” like the Arabic ֿٌّٰٰ (attuda, Vth. conjugation, to be skilled in an art), rather denotes, “those who are skilled, or expert.” So SCHULTENS, GESENIUS, NOYES, and ZÖCKLER. The SEPTUAGINT has: “He who is to rouse up,” &c. The VULGATE: “Those who are prepared,” &c. So the TARGUM, AQUILA, and SYMMACHUS, as well as LUTHER, MARTIN, and DIODATI. עוֹרֵר (‘orer), properly “to raise up from sleep,” as Psa_44:23. So DE WETTE: “To wake up.” SCOTT, observing that the sign of the infinitive is omitted, views the expression as a periphrasis for the future tense of the indicative, according to the Syriac idiom. The same appears to have been done by the translator of the Septuagint.
Of those who regard the noun as derived from לָוָה (lauah =ֿٌّٰٰ) “to twist,” with the final syllable תָּן (tan) as the terminative form of the noun, are BOCHART, SCHULTENS, DATHE, and GESENIUS, who understands by the word a serpent of the larger kind, especially, as in chap. Job_41:1, a crocodile. The SEPTUAGINT, followed by the COPTIC and the ITALA, renders it, “the great whale.” The VULGATE leaves the word untranslated, “Leviathan.” According to NOYES, the word is a common name to denote monstrous animals of different kinds, here perhaps a monstrous serpent. BARNES: Used here to represent the most fierce and powerful of animals. ZÖCKLER: The great dragon—the enemy of the sun and moon—which, according to an ancient superstition, seeks to cause darkness by swallowing them up. According to GROTIUS, CODURCUS, and SEB. SCHMIDT, the persons in the text are represented as skilled in stirring up monsters by magic incantatious. DÖDERLEIN and Um-BREIT understand, “charming of serpents.” According to OSIANDER, NOYES, BARNES, and others, the reference is to sorcerers, or persons supposed to possess the power of making any day fortunate or unfortunate, or even to call forth terrific monsters from the forest or the deep, in order to gratify their own malice, or that of others, of whom Balaam is viewed as an example. WEMYSS has: “Skilled in conjuring up Leviathan.” Dr. CHALMERS understands: “Magicians and conjurers who raise, or pretend to raise up infernal spirits by their spells. HIRZEL, HAHN, and SCHLOTTMANN: the Constellation called the Dragon, between the Great and the Little Bear, or some other of the same name. So MAURER, who refers to the words of Horace as a parallel: “Quæ sidera excantata voce Thessala lunamque cœlo deripit.” LEE, understanding the whale, or some other monster, translates: “Who are ready to stir up a leviathan,”—which, he adds, none but the most desperate would do. BERNARD: “Ready to arouse the crocodile.” CONANT: Skilled to rouse the Leviathan.” HUFNAGEL observes that the expression is probably employed to denote the undertaking of a most perilous task. JENOUR renders it, “Prepared to stir up the Leviathan to battle; i.e., persons who hate life, and are prepared to expose themselves to certain death. So BOOTHROYD, who observes that in chap. Job_41:8-10, to arouse Leviathan is represented as inevitable destruction. Various other allusions are conjectured to be made in the expression. Reference is supposed by some to be made to the invocation of Typhon, the author of destruction, whose symbol was the crocodile, such as is found on a papyrus roll from Thebes. So CAREY, who also thinks an allusion may be made to an ancient custom of the Egyptians in hunting the crocodile on a particular day, and then, after killing it, throwing its dead body before the temple of their god. FAUCETT thinks a reference is made to those who claimed the power of controlling or rousing up wild beasts at their will. CALMET sees an allusion to the Atlantes, a people of Ethiopia, who were ready to kill and eat the crocodile. SIR G. WILKINSON, quoted by Carey, refers to the Tinty rites, who were expert in catching and overcoming the crocodile in the water. ADAM CLARKE thinks that persons are meant who are desperate enough to provoke the crocodile to tear them in pieces. M. HENRY thinks allusion is made to fishers who, being about to strike the whale or crocodile, curse it with the bitterest curses they can invent, in order to weaken its strength (!) Some of the older interpreters, as COCCEIUS, TIRINUS, and CARTWRIGHT, thought the allusion also to fishers, but as cursing under the vexations and disappointments of their calling. HUTCHESON of Edinburgh, regarded the allusion as made to mariners, who, in a storm, curse the day they went to sea, and are ready by their wishes to evoke the sea-monsters to swallow them up. CHAPPELOW, followed by COBBIN, thinks those persons meant whose business it was to curse the days esteemed ominous and inauspicious. SANCTIUS accounted for the expression on the ground that in execrations men commonly introduce things that are most horrible, as the leviathan. SCOTT, in his metrical translation, has: “Rouse fierce Leviathan from his oozy bed;” and adds, that probably the crocodile is meant, and that as it is natural to lament those who so miserably perished with bitter imprecations on the disastrous day, Job calls for the assistance of such language. Another construction of the words has been proposed, and has been adopted by SCHULTENS, and ROSENMÜLLER: “Let those who are skilled in that art, curse or brand it (his birthday) as the day that rouses up Leviathan”—as the dire mother of direst evils. Similarly COLEMAN: “as men promptly curse the day that evokes the crocodile from the deep.” Leviathan was regarded by AMBROSE, and the fathers in general, as another name for Satan, whom Christ was to encounter and overcome. GREGORY thought the persons in the text to be those who fell by the devil’s deceit. GUALTHER supposes them to be those who evoke Satan by incantations and witchcrafts. OSIANDER regards the word as equivalent to רְפָאִים (rephraim) the “spirits of the dead” mentioned in chap. Job_26:5. (in the E.V. “dead things”); and considers it here as denoting the Evil One, and spectres in general. By most of the earlier interpreters, who regarded the word as denoting some monster, the whale was the creature understood. So COCCEIUS, SCULTETUS, JUNIUS and TREMELLIUS, &C.
The sense of “lamentation,” as in our authorised version, from לָיָה (layah) = אָלהָ (alah) “to mourn,” was generally preferred by the earlier translators, as PISCATOR, MERCER, PAGNINUS, MORUS, MONTANUS, and VATABLUS. MARTIN, in his French version, has: “Who are ready to renew their mourning.” DIODATI, in his Italian: “Always ready to make new lamentations.” FRY renders the passage: “who are ready at raising their lamentations;” but supposes that the word is derived from לוּ (loo), “O that;—this syllable perhaps being the commencement of the solemn dirges or ululations of hired mourners, still common in the East; like the ἐλελελελελεῦ of IO in Prometheus Vinctus, the ulula of the Irish, and the ולולו (ululu) of the Arabians. According to TOWNSEND, the ideas of mourning and Leviathan are combined,—the mourning and that which was the cause of it; the allusion being to the idolatrous persecuting power that afflicted the Church of God between the commencement of the empire of the first Ninus, or Nimrod, and the calling of Abraham; and to the too late repentance of those who cursed the day when they gave their assistance to the founding and consolidating of that empire.
Job_3:14. “Which built desolate places for themselves.” הַבֹּנִים (habbonim), “who built up,” not “who built again.” So ZÖCKLER, as against CASTALIO, GOOD, and others. CAREY: “Who were building,” i.e., when overtaken by death. חֲרָבוֹת (kharâbhoth), plural of חָרְבָּה (hhorbah) dryness, desolation, from חָרֵב (kharebh), to be dried up, devastated; waste places, ruins: “who built ruins for themselves,” i.e. splendid edifices, as palaces or tombs, soon to become ruins or great stone heaps. So GESENIUS, UMBREIT, WINER, NOYES, CONANT, ZÖCKLER, and most moderns. VULGATE: “Who build solitudes for themselves.” The SEPTUAGINT appears strangely to have read the word as the plural of חֶרֶב (kherebh), a sword. The TARGUM, SYRIAC, and ARABIC, like the Vulgate, have: “Solitudes,” or “desert places.” SO MARTIN and DIODATI. LUTHER: “The wilderness.” PAGNINUS: “Solitary places.” DRUSIUS: “Destroyed places.” CASTALIO: “Ruins,” fallen palaces or towers. MERCER and VATABLUS, like the Vulgate: “Solitudes.” JUNIUS: “Splendid buildings in desolate places, where no one would have expected such.” JENOUR: “Waste places.” BOOTHROYD: “Ruins of former cities.” GOOD: “Ruined wastes.” YOUNG: “Wastes.” LEE: “Places now desolate.” PINEDA, followed by SCHULTENS, DÔDEBRLEIN, CAREY, and others, think the reference is to sepulchral monuments, as the pyramids. PARK-HURST: “Dreary sepulchral mansions, where the body is wasted, or consumed.” SCOTT, the translator, thinks that sepulchral grottoes are meant, such as those at Thebes, or the pyramids: “Whose burial mansions load the desert plains.” MICHAELIS regards the words as equivalent to חֲרָמוֹת (kharâmoth), and translates it, “temples, shrines, mausoleums.” ZÖCKLER observes that, though πι-χραμ (pi-chram, “the temple”), is the name given to the pyramids, it is, perhaps, not the same with חֲרָביֹת; and that if mausoleums are intended, they are not necessarily those of Egypt. HIRZEL, with EWALD, DELITZSCH, STICKEL, &C., thinks mausoleums or pyramids are to be understood, and points to the ruins of Petra. BARNES observes that some of the most wonderful sepulchral monuments are found in the land of Edom to this day. TOWNS-END thinks the reference may be to the building of the Tower of Babel. The expression לָמוֹ (lamo), “for themselves,” is understood by some as meaning: “To make their name immortal.” So MERCER, VA-TABLUS, DRUSIUS, ADAM CLARKE. CODUR-CUS: “In order to display their wealth and power, enjoy retirement, or form new colonies.” GRYNŒUS: “To resist all-destroying death.” CAREY: “For their own tombs.” COLEMAN: “As habitations for themselves, either while living or dead.” NORAS thinks that the expression is so nearly pleonastic that it may be omitted. BARNES, on the other hand, thinks it full of emphasis; the ruinous structure being made for themselves alone. UMBREIT sees in it Job’s irony breaking out from the black clouds of melancholy.
COMMENCEMENT OF FIRST GREAT DIVISION OF THE POEM
Job’s bitter complaint and outburst of despondency—the more immediate occasion of the Controversy between him and his friends
I. Job breaks the prolonged silence (Job_3:1-2).
“After this,”—viz.: the visit of his friends and the seven days’ silence.—“Job opened his mouth.” Denoting—
(1) freeness of speech (Eze_16:62; Eze_29:4);
(2) earnestness in speaking (Pro_31:5-6; Isa_52:7);
(3) deliberate and grave utterance (Psa_78:2; Pro_3:6). Orientals speak seldom, and then gravely and sententiously. Job long silent from his extraordinary calamity. Profound grief shuts the mouth (Psa_77:4). Pent up anguish now finds a vent. His sufferings probably increasing, and his feelings now irrepressible. Patient till God’s anger seems to sink into his soul [Chrysostom]. Satan, to exasperate his feelings and depress his spirits, now acts on his mind and imagination, both directly and through his disease. The moment now arrived that Satan had been waiting for. Usually great danger in giving vent to pent up feelings. A double prayerful watch then needed not to sin with one’s tongue (Psa_39:1; Psa_141:3). Danger of speaking rather from heat of passion than light of wisdom. Better for Job had he kept his mouth close still [Trapp]. “Either say nothing or what is better than nothing” [Greek Proverb]. When God’s hand is on our back, our hand should be on our mouth [Brookes]. The maturity of grace proved by the management of the tongue (Jas_3:2).—“Job spake and said.” Every expression in Job’s speeches not to be vindicated. The rashness of his language acknowledged by himself (ch. Job_6:3). Job in the end not only hushed but humbled for what he had said (ch. Job_40:5). In judging of his language however we are to remember:—
1. The extremity of his sufferings and the depth of his distress. His language extravagant but natural. Stunned by his calamities. Great sufferings naturally generate great passions. Job’s sufferings to be viewed in connection with—
(1) His high unblemished character;
(2) His previous long continued prosperity;
(3) The prevalent ideas as to Divine retribution.
2. The time of his suffering also a time of spiritual darkness. Satan’s permission extended to the mind as well as the body. Mental confusion often the result of Satan’s buffetings. Times of outward trouble often those also of inward conflict.
3. The period at which Job lived. Twilight as compared with that of the Gospel. Topics of consolation limited. No suffering Forerunner and Example to contemplate. Prospects dim as regarded the future world. No Scriptures with examples written for patience and comfort.
4. The usually depressing nature of Job’s disease.
5. The fact that the holiest saint is nothing except as strengthened and upheld by Divine grace.
6. Even in Job’s complaint, no reproach is uttered against either the Author or instruments of his trouble.
II. Job curses the day of his birth (Job_3:1-3, &c.).
“Cursed his day.” Vilified, reproached, and execrated the day of his birth. A different word from that in Job_1:5; Job_1:11; Job_2:5; Job_2:9.; but the proper Hebrew word for cursing. Wished it to be branded as an evil, doleful, unhappy day. Similar language used by Jeremiah under less trying circumstances (Jer_20:14-18). The words mark:—
1. Satan’s defeat. Job curses his day; Satan expected him to curse his God. Under law, Satan conquers; under grace, suffers defeat.
2. Job’s fall. The language a contrast with Job_1:21; Job_2:10. A secret and indirect reflection on Divine Providence. Job hitherto “a perfect man;” is he so now? (Jas_3:2). An end seen to all human perfection (Psa_119:96). A believer’s fall consistent with final conquest (Mic_7:8). Faith and patience may both suffer eclipse without perishing (Luk_22:32). A sheep may fall into the mire, while a swine wallows in it [Brookes]. Satan’s sieve brings out the saint’s chaff. The Scripture verified (Ecc_7:20; 1Ki_8:46; Pro_20:9; Jas_3:2). The man Christ Jesus the only Righteous One (1Jn_2:2). Tempted in all points, yet without sin (Heb_4:15). The greatest sufferer, yet His only cry: “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me” (Mat_27:46). Endured anguish and temptation without abatement of love or trace of impatience. Thought also of the day of His birth, but with thankfulness and praise (Psa_22:9-10).
3. The presence of the flesh in believers. In ch. Job_1:21 and Job_2:10, the Spirit spoke in Job; in Job_3:3, &c., the flesh. The flesh in Job cursed the day of his birth; the spirit in David blessed God for the same thing (Psa_139:14-17). The believer is like Rebekah with two nations in her womb (Gen_25:23). These in perpetual conflict with each other (Gal_5:17; Rom_7:25). Hence “out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing” (Jas_3:10).
4. The folly and wickedness of sin. Foolish to curse a day at all; wicked to curse one’s birthday. Every day is God’s creature; our birthday, His creature to us for good. Under a dispensation of mercy, every man’s birthday either a blessing, or may be such. Present misery not to obliterate the remembrance of past mercy. The very thing which Job had formerly reproved in his wife (ch. Job_2:10).
5. The passionate vehemence of Job’s grief. Seen in the language and figures he employs. Job_3:5. “Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it.” Take away its beauty and make it abominable; or rather, as the margin: “Claim it for its own;” take it back and keep entire possession of it. Allusion to primeval chaotic darkness (Gen_1:2).—“Let a cloud dwell upon it;” or, “let a mass of clouds pitch their tent over it.” The utterance of a deeply moved and excited spirit. Words similar in sense heaped together to intensify the idea. The eloquence of grief.—“Let the blackness of the day terrify it.” Let whatever tends to obscure the day, as eclipses, storms, clouds, hot winds, &c., make it dismal and frightful. The day on which Christ suffered, thus “terrified,” not by a natural but a supernatural darkness. “Surely nature is expiring, or the God of nature is suffering,”—said on that solemn occasion by a heathen philosopher.—Job_3:6. “Let it not come into the number of the months;”—let it disappear from the calendar; be made to drop out of memory and existence.—Job_3:7. “Let that night be solitary,” ungladdened by a single birth, and destitute of all social converse and festivity. Returns to the night of his conception. Sublime accumulation of poetic figures and tragic expressions.—“Let no joyful noise be heard therein;” no song or sound of mirth; no voice of natal or of nuptial joy. Let it be devoted to the wail of sorrow, or to deep perpetual silence.—Job_3:8. “Let them curse it that curse the day,”—either hired mourners, astrologers, or unhappy desperate persons; those accustomed to execrate daylight, the day of some special calamity, the day of their own birth, or that of some friend’s death. All such to be employed in execrating the day of Job’s birth.—“Who are ready to raise up their mourning;” or rather, as in the margin,—“to raise up a Leviathan,”—the crocodile or other monster (Isa_27:1). Same persons described. Probable reference to some popular superstition, or practice in lamentation and execration. Job wishes his birthday to be execrated by such persons in the strongest and most energetic language.—Job_3:9. “Neither let it see the dawning of the day.” The Hebrew full of poetic beauty,—“Let it not see the eyelids of the morning.” No cheerful rays of morning light glancing forth from the rising sun, to succeed that baleful night. Picture of eternal darkness. Heaven a nightless day, hell a dayless night [Trapp].
III. Job wishes he had never been, or had died when lie began to live (Job_3:11).
“Why died I not from the womb?” In the impetuosity and perplexity of his spirit, puts it in the form of a question. Questions often asked by a troubled spirit in petulance and rebellion. These questions among the things confessed by Job with humiliation and repentance (ch. Job_42:6). “God’s judgments a great deep; and he who asks why, will be driven out on this deep, for there is no chart to guide us” [Beecher]. That our times are in God’s hand quieted David’s spirit, but failed to quiet Job’s (Psa_31:15). Observe:—
1. Times may come when the sweetest truths fail to comfort a child of God. Unbelief and passion shut out the light and refuse to be comforted.
2. Job’s language the common lament of fallen and suffering humanity. Heathen philosophy concluded that, in the view of the troubles of life, the best thing is not to be born at all; the next best is, to get out of the world as soon as possible.
3. Job’s question unanswerable but for the birth in Bethlehem. Better not to have been born at all, if not born again. With a Saviour provided and offered, our birth either a blessing, or might be. Under an economy of grace, life spared in mercy (Lam_3:22; 2Pe_3:15).
4. A solemn question for each, Why did I not die from the womb? Life invested with the most solemn responsibilities. A solemn thing to die, perhaps more so to live. Important and mysterious purposes connected with each one’s life. The babe in the mother’s arms may prove a Moses, a David, or a Paul. “What will ever come of it?” said one to Franklin in reference to the first discovered balloon. “What will ever come of that?” replied Franklin, pointing to a baby in its cradle. Job ignorant, when he asked the question, that his name should become a synonym for suffering patience.
IV. Job describes the grave and state of the dead (Job_3:13-19)
The description grand, tragic, and poetical. Given according to outward appearance and in relation to earthly experience.
Death and the Grave
1. Death a state of quiet sleep (Job_3:13). A sleep as regards the animal frame. Gives the grave an attractiveness in a world of tumult and sorrow. Death a boon in such a world. The churchyard a hallowed resting place, where—“The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.” Only sin disturbs this beautiful idea. Sin plants thorns and deadly nightshade among roses and evergreens. Jesus takes away the sting of death, and makes the grave a bed of rest. The death of a believer pre-eminently a sleep (1Co_15:51; 1Th_4:14; 1Th_5:10). The sleep in Jesus followed by a blessed awaking (1Th_5:16).
2. The grave a place of general rendezvous (Job_3:14; Job_3:16; Job_3:19). “The small and great,”—infants that never saw the light, with kings and their counsellors of state, all gather in the common ante-room of the grave, waiting the resurrection summons. In the great cemetery of Cairo, the magnificent mausoleums of the caliphs are mingled with the humble graves of the poor. Common receptacle for “the wise and foolish, cowards, and the brave.”
3. A place of absolute equality (Job_3:19). “The small and great are there;” or, “are there the same.” On the same level, and in the same condition. The bones of the prince undistinguished in the charnel-house from those of the peasant. “Dust to dust” pronounced over the coffin of the monarch as well as that of the pauper. The burial place of Alexander the Great shown in an obscure corner in Alexandria. The only distinction in the next world determined by our character and conduct in this.
4. A place where the wicked cease from their oppression (Job_3:17-18). The grave an effectual check to the wrongs of the tyrant, the slave-owner, and the persecutor. Herod smitten in the midst of his murders and eaten up of worms (Act_12:23).
5. A place of rest for the suffering and weary (Job_3:17-19). “The prisoners rest together;”—hearing no more “the cruel voice nor sounding rod.” Prisoners in the gold mines of Egypt, like slaves in more recent times, were driven to their work by the lash, their taskmasters being barbarian soldiers, who spoke a foreign language.—“The servant is free from his master.” Slavery viewed as, in most cases, worse than death. To make the repose of the grave real and complete was the mission of Jesus, (Mat_11:28). The true rest in death taught in Heb_4:9; Rev_14:13. The grave a sweet resting place only to those who have found rest in Christ. To believers, a place of rest—
(1) From the cares and troubles of life;
(2) From the oppression of man and the buffetings of Satan;
(3) From the burden of a carnal and sinful nature;
(4) From the conflict with sin and the flesh;
(5) From painful labours in the service of Christ and humanity. Do your work, and God will send you to rest in good time [Trapp].
6. A place exhibiting the vanity of earthly glory and riches (Job_3:14). Kings and counsellors of the earth among the tenants of the tomb (Isa_14:6; Eze_32:21, &c.). “Earth’s proudest triumphs end in ‘Here he lies.’ ” “This” (a shroud fastened and carried at the top of a lance by his own command), “this is all that remains to Saladin the Great of all his glory.” “Conquer the whole earth, and in a few days such a spot as this (six feet of earth) will be all you have” [Constantine the Great to a miser]. All the glory of Napoleon dwindled down to a pair of military boots, which he insisted on having on when dying. Death and corruption mock “the pride of heraldry and the pomp of power.” The bodies of Egyptian kings and statesmen embalmed and preserved for thousands of years. Wealth and art may preserve the body’s form, but neither its life nor beauty.—“Which built desolate places for themselves.” Only that. Their gain and glory for which they laboured, only a desolation. Palaces to become ruins,—pyramids and mausoleums to be rifled of their contents. The ruins of Cæsar’s Golden Palace at Rome now partly covered with a peasant’s garden; those of Cleopatra’s palace at Alexandria scarcely distinguishable. The great pyramid at Ghizeh still standing, but shorn of its original beauty. The marble casing stripped from its sides to adorn a neighbouring city. Its granite sarcophagus, once containing the dust of Cheops, its royal founder, long empty. In the second pyramid, the body of its founder, Cephren, discovered a few years ago and brought to England. The Egyptian tombs themselves usually built in or near a desert. These tombs generally built on a scale of great extent and magnificence. Often hewn out of the solid rock and highly decorated. The rock-hewn tombs at Thebes about two miles in extent. Of the pyramids at Ghizeh, the largest occupies an area of 13 acres; the second 11. The whole one solid mass of masonry, with a small chamber or two in the centre. The height of the Great Pyramid, 479 feet, or 119 higher than St. Paul’s Church in London. These pyramids built by the Kings themselves, and for themselves. Begun at their accession, enlarged each successsive year of their reign, and closed, as if for ever, at their death. More care bestowed by the Egyptians on their tombs than on their dwellings. In Persia, royal sepulchres, apart from others, cut out high up in the face of steep cliffs. Shebna’s vanity (Isa_22:16). Some take more care about their sepulchres than their souls [Caryl]. A heathen poet says: “Light is the loss of a sepulchre;” but who can calculate the loss of a soul? (Mat_16:26).—(Job_3:15). “With princes that had gold.” Had gold. Their riches a thing of the past. Their gold unable to bribe away death.—“Who filled their houses with silver,” which should rather have filled the hungry. Gold and silver often preserved to be a witness against its possessor. Treasure heaped together for the last days (Jas_5:3). Perhaps ordered by the possessors to be deposited with them in their tombs, also called their houses (Isa_22:16; Isa_14:18-19). Its presence there a bitter mockery, its former possessor able neither to use nor recognize it.
IV. Job complains that life is continued to the suffering and sorrowing (Job_3:20.)
“Wherefore is light given to them that are in misery?” &c. A tacit reflection on his Maker’s goodness, justice, and wisdom. Another of those things that Job repented of “in dust and ashes,” (Job_3:26).
Life
Wisely and graciously continued even to sufferers.
1. If unprepared for death, the sufferer is spared in mercy for such preparation. Death to the unprepared the harbinger of death eternal. An infinitely greater evil to be cut off in sin than to be spared in suffering. The life of nature mercifully continued, that the life of grace may be obtained here, and the life of glory hereafter.
2. If prepared, the sufferer’s life is continued for various wise and gracious purposes.
(1.) For proof and trial of his slate. Suffering a touchstone of sincerity. Affliction the fire that tries the moral metal of the soul. God uses not scales to weigh our graces, but a touchstone to try them [Brookes].
(2.) For further sanctification. Afflictions God’s goldsmiths. The rising waves lifted the ark nearer heaven. Affliction the Christian man’s divinity. Deepens repentance for sin, the cause of all suffering. Promotes the exercise of Christian graces, especially meekness, patience, and submission. Even Christ learned obedience by the things which He suffered. Trials develope and strengthen Christian character. Each succeeding wave hardens the oyster-shell that encloses the pearl.
(3.) For enhancement of future glory and happiness. As we suffer with Christ we shall be glorified with him. Labour makes rest sweeter and the crown brighter.
(4.) For the benefit and edification of others. Suffering meekly borne by a believer exhibits the sustaining power of grace and so encourages others. The believer’s lamp often trimmed afresh at a fellow-christian’s sick bed. Christian animated to persevere through the Valley of the Shadow of Death by the sound of Faithful’s voice before him. Four hundred persons converted to Christ by witnessing Cæcilia’s demeanour under suffering.
(5.) For the glory of Him who is both the Author and Finisher of faith. Affliction meekly endured exhibits the faithfulness and love of God, and so leads both ourselves and others to praise Him (Isa_24:15; 1Pe_1:7).—Suffering a blessing to society, and one of its regenerating forces. Tends to humble pride and check evil-doers. Exhibits the evil of sin, the vanity of the world, and the certainty of death. Affords room for the exercise of sympathy, compassion, and benevolence. Gives scope to self-sacrifice, the noblest form of humanity.
V. Job expresses his longing for death (Job_3:21).
“Which long for death, &c.” Said to be especially true of those who laboured in the gold mines of Egypt. A peculiar feature of Job’s disease. Probably suicide the temptation presented to him by Satan through his wife. Suicide Satan’s recipe for the ills of humanity. Job longs for death but is kept by grace from doing anything to procure it.
Death
Our time in God’s hand, not our own. He is ill fitted to die who is unwilling to live. Physical death only a blessing to him who has been delivered from spiritual death, and so secured against death eternal. Death a monster only to be safely encountered when deprived of his sting. His terrors only quenched in the blood of Christ. Death only to be desired—
(1.) When our work is done;
(2.) When God pleases to call us;
(3.) That we may be freed from sin;
(4.) That we may be with Christ (Php_1:23). To bear life’s burden well is better than to be delivered from it. Grace makes a man willing to live, amidst life’s greatest privations and sufferings; willing to die, amidst its greatest enjoyments and comforts.—“And it cometh not.’ The extreme of misery to desire death and not be able to find it (Rev_9:6). The misery of the damned. Endless existence the crown of hell’s torments. Salted with fire (Mar_9:49), The first death drives the soul out of the body; the misery of the second death is, that it keeps the soul in it.
VI. Job plaintively dwells on his sad condition (Job_3:23).
Describes himself as “A man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged in,”—visited with troubles which he cannot understand, and from which he sees no way of escape. The soul in darkness misreads all God’s dealings, and only looks on the dark side. Satan had said of Job what Job here says of himself, but with greater truth. Satan truly but enviously viewed God as hedging Job round with protection and blessing; Job views God as unkindly hedging him round with darkness and trouble. Job ascribes to God what was really done by Satan with God’s permission, or by God only at Satan’s instigation. The memory of past good too often obliterated by the experience of present evil.—Represents his present calamities as the realisation of his worst fears (Job_3:25). “The thing which I greatly feared is come upon me.” A tender conscience fears reverses in the height of prosperity, and in consequence of it. A fall after great felicity an instinct of human nature. Paulus Emilius, a Roman general, on the death of his two sons immediately after an unusually splendid triumph, said: “I have always had a dread of fortune; and because in the course of this war she prospered every measure of mine, the rather did I expect that some tempest would follow so favourable a gale.” A wise man feareth, but a fool rageth and is confident” (Pro_14:16).
Fear of the Future
Apprehension of future evil right and profitable—
(1.) When it preserves from carnal and careless security (Psa_30:6-7);
(2.) When it incites to the use of right means to prevent it (Pro_14:16);
(3.) When it leads us to prepare for it by seeking strength to endure it;
(4.) When it arises from the conviction of the uncertainty of earthly good (Pro_27:24);
(5.) When it produces earnestness in securing a better and enduring portion (Mat_6:20);
(6.) When it leads to fidelity in the improvement of present benefits.
Such apprehension wrong and hurtful;—
(1.) When arising from undue anxiety about the continuance of present mercies;
(2.) When attended with anxiety and distrust about the future (Php_4:6);
(3.) When preventing the thankful enjoyment of present blessings (Ecc_2:23-24);
(4.) When leading to undue means to preserve them.
Apprehension and freedom from security no prevention of the evil (Job_3:26). “Yet trouble came.” Learn—
(1) Prayer and piety are no security against trouble. God has not promised to preserve his people from trouble, but to support them in it;
(2) No human caution or foresight is able to secure men against calamity. The race not to the swift nor the battle to the strong.
(3) To sit loose to earthly comforts is the best way to retain them, or to bear their removal. To God’s people no trouble comes unsent, or without a blessing in its bosom. Trouble in the believer’s inventory (1Co_3:21-22). Among the “all things” that work together for his good (Rom_8:28). Unable to separate him from Christ’s love (Rom_8:39). The storm makes the traveller wrap himself more closely in his mantle.
Trouble and its Uses to the Believer
To believers trouble is,—
1. Purifying. Affliction is God’s furnace for purging away our dross; his thorn for piercing through our pride. The Jews clung to idols till they were carried captive to Babylon. The three captives lost nothing in the furnace but their bonds.
2. Preservative. Often preserves from greater evils. Augustine missed his way, and so escaped intended mischief. The Christian’s armour rusts in time of peace. Salt brine preserves from putrefaction.
3. Fructifying. Affliction makes both fragrant and fruitful. God’s rod, like Aaron’s buds, blossoms, and bears almonds. Flowers smell sweetest after a shower. Vines said to bear the better for bleeding. Believers often most internally fruitful when most externally afflicted. Manasseh’s chain more profitable to him than his crown. Many trees grow better in the shade than the sunshine.
4. Teaching. Trouble teaches by experience. God’s rod a speaking one. At eventide light. Stars shine when the sun goes down. Some scriptures not understood by Luther till he was in affliction. God’s house of correction His school of instruction.
5. Brings consolation. Suffering times often the believer’s singing times. Songs in the night. As our tribulations in Christ, so our consolations. Every stone thrown at Stephen drove him nearer to Christ. Jacob’s most blessed sleep when he had only stones for his pillow. Paul’s sweetest epistles written when a prisoner at Rome. The most of Heaven seen by John when a lonely exile at Patmos. The darker the cloud the brighter the rainbow. God’s presence changes the furnace of trial into a fire of joy. God’s rod, like Jonathan’s staff, brings honey on its point.
6. Conforms us to Christ. God had one son without sin, but none without suffering. All His members to be conformed to His suffering image, though some resemble Him more than others [Rutherford].
7. Is the way to the Kingdom. Affliction, only a dark passage to our Father’s house,—a dark lane to a royal palace. The short storm that ends in an everlasting calm [Brookes].
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain On v1 This text speaks to us over nearly four thousand…
Job 3:17
This text speaks to us over nearly four thousand years. Job lived in days when the light of truth was dim; the Sun of righteousness had not yet risen above the horizon; Jesus had not yet brought life and immortality to light; and thus it is possible that we are able to understand Job’s words more fully and better than he understood them himself. The text may be read first as of the grave, but in its best meaning it speaks of a better world, to which the grave is but the portal.
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I. Think of these words as spoken of the grave. (1) In the grave, Job says, for one pleasant thing, "the wicked cease from troubling." Cross the line that parts life from death, and the strongest human hand cannot reach to vex or harm any more. There is nothing more striking about the state of those who have gone into the unseen world than the completeness of their escape from all worldly enemies, however malignant and however powerful. (2) But there is something beyond the mere escape from worldly evil. Now the busy heart is quiet at last, and the weary head lies still. "There the weary are at rest." It is sometimes comforting, and we cannot say it is not sometimes fit and right, to think of a place where we shall find rest and quiet, where "the weary are at rest." But though a deep sleep falls on the body, it is only for a while, and indeed there is a certain delusion in thinking of the grave as a place of quiet rest. The soul lives still, and is awake and conscious, though the body sleeps; and it is our souls that are ourselves. Even that in us which does sleep—even the body—sleeps to wake again.
II. Though these are Old Testament words, we read them in a New Testament light, as those who know that Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life to all His people. These words speak of a better world. They point us onward to heaven. The two great things of which they assure us and remind us are safety and peace, (1) There is to be safety, and the sense of safety. "There the wicked cease from troubling." Not wicked men only, but everything wicked: evil spirits, evil thoughts, evil influences, and our own sinful hearts. When the wicked cease from troubling, there will be no trouble at all. (2) "The weary are at rest." We know the meaning of all the vague and endless aspirations of our human hearts. It is that "this is not our rest." Our rest is beyond the grave. There is something of life’s fitful fever about all the bliss of this life; but in that world the bliss will be restful, calm, satisfied, self-possessed, sublime. It will be "the peace of God, which passeth all understanding."
A. K. H. B., Counsel and Comfort Spoken from a City Pulpit, p. 128.
Reference: Job 3:17.—G. Durrant, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 371.
Job 3:23
I. We have in the text a great certainty—light is given. The light within the soul falls from other worlds, from unseen, unrealised heights beyond the soul. "The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord." Those strange, perceptive intuitions which pry and penetrate into metaphysical subtleties, those frequently even unhallowed inquisitivenesses which question all things—and sometimes, it may be, too daringly—whence are they? Yes, "the light is given."
II. We have in the text a great perplexity—"the way is hid." It seems that the light only reveals itself, neither the objects nor the way. It seems as if our consciousness became paralysed at the touch of speculation; a dark, black wall rises where we anticipated we should find a way. The light tantalises; it distresses. Like a handful of men in camp besieged and beleaguered by the mighty armies of the foeman, the soul exclaims, "I am among lions! Which is the way out?" Knowledge is the saddest condition of the soul if there is not the knowledge of the true God and eternal life.
III. Light can only be seen in Christ. God can only be known in Him. "Why is light given to a man whose way is hid?" (1) To enable him to find his way and to escape beyond the hedge. Light is not its own end, excepting as it shall guide us to the Source of all light. Be the almoner of the light thou hast. God gives the candle for the day, for the occasion. Be faithful to the light of today. (2) Light is given to teach man his dependence, to show him that "it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps." (3) What is naturally illegible to sense, and to the apprehension of sense, is legible to faith. "He who believeth shall not walk in darkness." His way is not hid. "The light that never was on sea or land" shines on that way.
E. Paxton Hood, Dark Sayings on a Harp, p. 91.
References: Job 3:23.—Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes: Genesis to Proverbs, p. 118. Job 3—S. Cox, Expositor, 1st series, vol. iv., p. 241; Ibid., Commentary on Job, p. 60. Job 4:6.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. iv., p. 314. Job 4:12-21.—Homiletic Magazine, vol. xi., p. 197.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 Job Curses his Day
Job Curses his Day
Job curses the day of his birth. He asks why he did not die at birth: why should his wretched life be prolonged?
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We are now confronted with a striking change in Job's frame of mind from that presented in Job_2:10. Probably a considerable interval had elapsed before his friends arrived. He complains in the speeches which follow of the emaciated state into which he had fallen, and that from being the honoured of all he had become a byword to his neighbours: cp. Job_1:3; Job_19:8-22; Job_30:1-15. it is evident from this chapter that he has been brooding over the miseries of his condition and the hopelessness of the future, and complaint has taken the place of resignation. The presence of his friends only provokes him to give vent to his anguish. In their silent amazement he sees as in a mirror the extent of his own misery. He casts himself confidently on their sympathetic comprehension, and freely utters the dark thoughts he has hitherto restrained. He knows that if left to himself he may lose the fear of the Almighty, and trusts that they will deliver him from this temptation. But an obsolete theology froze their power to help.
Job 3 - Job_42:6 are poetical in form, not in exact metre as if for song, but rhythmical for reading. The parts of which the couplet or triplet forming the verse are composed show a marked parallelism, the thought in one half corresponding to or completing the thought in the other. Job 3 is a good example.
There is much similarity between this chapter and Jer_20:14-18, but the thoughts are those natural to the Hebrew mind, and we need not necessarily suppose them to be borrowed in either case.
3-10. Job curses the day of his birth.
1. His day] the day of his birth. It was thought that the days of the year had an existence of their own, so that any given day would come round again in its turn. Hence Job is not cursing a day which long ago ceased to be, but one which year by year comes back to blight the happiness of others as it blighted his: see on Job_3:5.
3. Observe the piled-up malediction. The power and pathos of the chapter are remarkable.
5. Stain it] RV 'claim it for their own.' Blackness of, etc.] RV 'all that maketh black the day'; e.g. eclipses and unusual darknesses.
6. Let it not be joined, etc.] let it be blotted out of the calendar. The ancients believed in lucky and unlucky days. Let this day ruin no more lives, it has ruined enough.
7. Solitary] RV 'barren.' No joyful voice] as on the occasion of a birth.
8. Let them curse it that curse the day] A reference to magicians who professed to be able to cast spells on a day and make it unlucky, apparently causing eclipses, as the next line suggests. Who are ready to raise up their mourning] RV 'Who are ready to raise up leviathan' (a mythical dragon). It was an ancient superstition that when an eclipse happened it was caused by a dragon which swallowed the sun or moon, or enfolded them in its coils, and so created darkness. A curious present-day confirmation of this idea occurs in the daily papers of Nov. 11, 1901. In a telegram from Peking it was reported that for the first time in history a few foreigners were invited to be present at the Chinese Board of Rites to witness 'the rescuing of the sun, which was suffering from the attacks of a dragon. The rescue was accomplished by means of prostrations, the burning of incense, and beating of drums and gongs.'
9. Dawning of the day] lit. 'eyelids of the morning.'
11-19. Job asks why he did not die at birth; a very fine passage expressive of great bitterness of soul.
12. Prevent me] RV 'receive me.' It was usual for the newborn child to be laid on its father's knees in token of ownership. If he suffered it to remain he pledged himself to bring it up.
14. Desolate places] RM 'solitary piles': cp. the pyramids of Egypt, which were the royal burying-places.
15-19. In reading these verses, in spite of their great beauty, we cannot help contrasting the vague and cheerless ideas about the future state in these early days with the clearer knowledge and glorious hope of the Christian. Although believing that the soul retained its consciousness, men do not appear to have regarded death as but the beginning of a higher form of existence, in looking forward to which man learns to bear the trials of life with patience. They thought of Sheol as the dim and cheerless underworld, where the pale shades of the departed dragged on a colourless existence, dark and monotonous. Yet the gloom of Sheol is to Job a welcome refuge, where he would be at peace. How terrible must be the pain from which he would gladly escape to so wretched a home.
15. Perhaps an allusion to the valuables buried in ancient tombs.
18. Oppressor] rather, 'taskmaster.'
20-26. Job asks why his wretched life should be prolonged.
22. There may be a connexion of thought here with the 'hid treasures' of Job_3:21. The idea is perhaps that of violating an ancient tomb. The entrance was usually hidden carefully.
23. Whose way is hid] in perplexity and doubt.
24. Translate, 'For my sighings are instead of my eating, and my groans are poured out like drink': cp. Psa_42:3.
25, 26. The verbs should all be in the present tense in these vv. Job's grief and sickness make him full of gloomy forebodings, which are constantly being realised.
The passionate complaints and longings for death in this chapter testify to the agitation of Job's soul. There are signs of impatience and resentment at God's dealings, which shock his friends and evidently influence the tone of their language towards him in the debate which follows.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v9 Heb. "the eyelids of the morning." Job 41:18.
dawning
Heb. "the eyelids of the morning." Job 41:18.
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 CHAPTER 3 Job’s Lament
CHAPTER 3 Job’s Lament
1. Job curses the day of his birth (Job 3:1-9)
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2. He longs for death (Job 3:10-23)
3. The reason why (Job 3:24-26)
Job 3:1-9. The silence is broken by Job. Alas! his lips do not utter praises now, but he cursed the day of his birth. It was a sore trial for Job to look into the faces of these pious friends, in perfect health and strength, and he, even more pious than they, stricken and smitten of God. It was an aggravation of Job’s grief and sorrow.
But let us notice though Job gives way to his feelings in this passionate outburst, he did not renounce God, nor is there a word of rebellion against Him. All through his address in answer to the arguments of his friends he does not lose sight of God, and over and over again expresses confidence in the unseen One, as in that matchless utterance, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust” (13:15).
Unmanned by the presence of his friends he curses the day of his birth. The chapter, and in fact all the chapters which follow, should be read in a good metrical version.
Perish the day when I was born to be,
And the night which said a man-child is conceived.
That day! may it be darkness;
Let not God regard it from above,
Neither let the light shine upon it.
Let darkness stain it and the shade of death.
Let densest clouds upon it settle down.
Let gathering darkness fill it with alarm.
That night--let gloom seize upon it.
Let it not rejoice among the days of the year.
Let it not come into the number of the months.
We give this as a sample of a metrical version. As the full quotation of the text is beyond the compass of our work, we recommend to our readers the translation of the Old Testament made by John Nelson Darby. It is the best we know and all poetical sections are given in this metrical arrangement.
Jeremiah, the great weeping prophet, also broke out in the midst of sorrow and treachery, in a similar lament, which reminds us of Job’s words.
Cursed be the day wherein I was born.
Let not the day in which 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 glad.
Wherefore came I forth out of the womb
To see labour and sorrow
That my days should be consumed with shame?
Such expressions are the failures of poor, frail man. And He who knoweth our frame and remembereth that we are but dust, is like a father who pitieth His children (Psa 103:13-14). Since critics associate the sufferings of Job with the suffering Servant of the Lord in Isaiah’s great prediction (Isa 53:1-12), we also can make this application, but not as meaning the nation, but our Lord Jesus Christ. What are Job’s sufferings in comparison with the sufferings of our Lord! Job sat upon an ash-heap, but the Son of God was nailed to the cross and then He was forsaken of God. Never did a murmur escape those blessed lips.
(The correct translation of verse 8 is as follows:
Let those engaged in cursing days, curse this day,
Who are ready to rouse Leviathan.
It voices heathen superstitions and myths.)
Job 3:10-23. He next wishes that he had died at the time of his birth and he looks upon death as a great relief and rest, saying:--
There the wicked cease from troubling
And there the wearied are at rest.
We see from these expressions that his mind turned to death as the great emancipator. Moses and Elijah exhibit the same trend of thought and weakness; so did disappointed Jonah when he said, “it is better for me to die.”
Weighed in the light of the New Testament all these expressions are found wanting. Death is not a friend whose visit is to be desired, but an enemy. The hope of God’s people in affliction and sorrow in the light of the gospel is not relief by death, but the coming of the Lord. The promise of the New Testament, “We shall not all sleep but be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye” (1Co 15:52) is unknown in the Old Testament, for it is one of the mysteries hidden in former ages. Job’s language is that of a man in despair; he seems to have quite forgotten the bright and blessed days of the past and fears a hopeless future.
Job 3:24-26. In this final paragraph Job states the reasons for his lament and longing for death to release him. We quote the last two verses.
For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me,
And that which I was afraid of is come unto me.
I was not careless, neither had I quietness
Neither was I at rest; yet trouble came.
He evidently in the days of his prosperity feared that just such calamities might overtake him. He knew the testing times would come and had no quietness. But now as they have come and the three anticipated evils overwhelmed him he would be glad to find the grave.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v1 Job Curses the day of His Birth.
Job Curses the day of His Birth.
Up till now Job had suppressed all thoughts of rebellion against God, every notion of dissatisfaction and impatience with the ways of Jehovah. But now he gives evidence of weakness.
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v. 1. After this opened Job his mouth, in the formal manner, with deliberation and gravity, after the custom of the ancient sages, and cursed his day, namely, the day of his birth.
v. 2. And Job spake and said, in a wild and bold outburst, which showed that he was impatient with the afflictions laid upon him by God, Cf Jer 20:14,
v. 3. Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man-child conceived, rather, "the night which said," for that night is personified as the witness and messenger of evil.
v. 4. Let that day be darkness, be covered with the everlasting shadows of death; let not God regard it from above, in any way inquire after it, as though interested in such an execrable time, neither let the light shine upon it, it should be shut out forever from the light of God’s presence.
v. 5. Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it, the thickest darkness, the deepest death-gloom reclaiming and covering it as an unclean thing; let a cloud dwell upon it, encamping over it, obscuring and hiding it forever; let the blackness of the day terrify it, the thought being that, just as a day seems all the gloomier and more dismal after it has once been lit up by a flash of light, so the dismal bitterness of darkness should settle upon the day of his birth as a form of retribution for permitting his being born.
v. 6. As for that night, let darkness seize upon it, everlasting darkness holding it in its possession; let it not be joined unto the days of the year, rather, "let it not be glad of its existence among the days of the year," as one of a joyful troop of nights which march by in glittering procession; let it not come into the number of the months, it should be omitted and forgotten, as utterly detestable.
v. 7. Lo, let that night be solitary, or, more forceful, "See, that night!" Let it be barren, and therefore utterly desolate, without a cheering voice; let no joyful voice come therein, not a single jubilant shout as over the happy birth of a welcome child.
v. 8. Let them curse it that curse the day, the sorcerers of old, whose ban was thought to bewitch a day so as to make it a day of misfortune, who are ready to raise up their mourning, literally, "those who are skilful in rousing up leviathan," the great dragon of whom the ancients believed that he devoured the sun and the moon at the time of eclipses, whom the heathen sorcerers tried to drive away with their incantations. All the men who had influence over the powers of evil should join in cursing the night of Job’s conception.
v. 9. Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark, refusing to be the heralds of the dawn and thereby continuing the darkness; let it look for light, but have none, condemned to the everlasting curse of darkness; neither let it see the dawning of the day, literally, "the eyelashes of the dawn," by which it might be refreshed and filled with pleasure;
v. 10. because it shut not up the doors of my mother’s womb, thus hindering his being conceived and born, nor hid sorrow from mine eyes, for if he had never been born, he would not now have been afflicted with this suffering. It was an impatient outburst which, although not directed at God outright, yet had the effect of a challenge of His providence and government of the world, and therefore was just as objectionable as similar outbursts on the part of believers today.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 4, 6, 8 opened his mouth
opened his mouth
This idiom means he began to speak. (See: Idiom)
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May the day on which I was born perish, the night
Job speaks of that day and night as if they were people. AT: "I wish that I had never been born" (See: Personification)
the night that said, 'A boy has been conceived.'
This expression intensifies the statement of Job's grief by going even further back in time from his birth to his conception. AT: "the night that said, 'A boy has been conceived' perish." (See: Ellipsis)
the night that said
Here the night is spoken of as if it were a person who could speak. The translator may choose, however, to translate it in a less metaphorical way. AT: "the night about which people said" (See: Personification)
A boy has been conceived
This may be put into active form. AT: "his mother has conceived a male child"
translationWords
curse
perish
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 5, 8, 9, 10 3:1-26 Job’s outburst did not mean that his integrity…
3:1-26 Job’s outburst did not mean that his integrity had cracked under the strain (42:7-8; Jas 5:11). Elijah and Jeremiah, both godly men, used the same hyperbolic language (1 Kgs 19:4; Jer 20:14-18).
3:1-10 Job spoke and thus put at risk his refusal to sin with his mouth (1:21; 2:10). • Job cursed the day of his birth in great detail. However, his words sound more like pitiful complaints. Job didn’t curse God as his creator, but he lamented the conditions of his existence.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.