Verse-by-Verse Bible Commentary
Job 3:12

Clarke's Commentary

Verse Job 3:12. Why did the knees prevent me? — Why was I dandled on the knees? Why was I nourished by the breasts? In either of the above cases I had neither been received into a mother's lap, nor hung upon a mother's breasts.

Bridgeway Bible Commentary

3:1-14:22 FIRST ROUND OF ARGUMENT

Job’s bitterness (3:1-26)

The long silence breaks when Job curses the day of his birth. He wishes he had never been born (3:1-7). He would like sorcerers also to curse that dark day. If they have power over the mythical sea monster Leviathan, they should have power to declare the day of his birth a day of darkness and sorrow, a day on which no person should have been born (8-10). If he had to be born, he wishes he had been stillborn. Then he would have gone straight to the place of the dead (11-16). Death releases all people from the sufferings of life, whether old or young, rich or poor, good or bad, kings or prisoners, masters or slaves (17-19).
Life only increases Job’s misery. He feels that he would be better dead than alive, better in darkness than in light. It is a cruel mockery when the sole purpose of life seems to be to make him conscious of his distress, the sole purpose of light to show him how horrible are his sufferings (20-24).
Yet Job’s suffering is more than physical. The inner conflict is more tormenting. According to what he has always believed, his great suffering means that he must be a great sinner, but he knows he is not. What he has always dreaded has apparently come true: he is cut off from God and he does not know why (25-26).

The debate

Although we shall see that in the end Job is proved right, this does not mean that everything he says during the debate is true (cf. 6:26; 42:1-6). Likewise, although the book will show that the arguments of the three friends are not the answer to Job’s suffering, this does not mean that everything they say is wrong.
The chief fault of the three friends is that they try to explain all the facts of human suffering on the basis that suffering is always the result of personal sin. Certainly, it sometimes is, but the special knowledge we are given in Chapters 1 and 2 of God’s control of events shows us that this is not always the case. No one can be certain of the underlying reason for another person’s suffering.
Also, amid all the friends’ words of advice there is no real sympathy for Job, and no acknowledgment of the remarkable patience and humble submission to God that he has already shown (see 1:21; 2:10). They firmly believe their traditional theories, but they have never been in Job’s position where they can test those theories in practice. They are in the dangerous position of having religious beliefs without corresponding personal experience. While they talk about God, Job talks to God.

Coffman's Commentaries on the Bible

MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN ME?

"Why died I not from the womb? Why did I not give up the ghost when my mother bare me? Why did the knees receive me? Or why the breasts that I should suck? For now should I have lain down and been quiet; I should have slept; then had I been at rest. With kings and counselors of the earth, Who built up waste places for themselves; Or with princes that had gold, Or filled their houses with silver: Or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been, As infants that never saw light. There the wicked cease from troubling; And there the weary are at rest. There the prisoners are at ease together; They hear not the voice of the taskmaster. The small and the great are there: And the servant is free from his master."

We have entitled this paragraph with the central cry of the seven words of Jesus Christ from the Cross (Matthew 27:46). There was no immediate answer for Job, the pitiful sufferer, and there was no immediate answer to that cry from the Cross; but there was an answer. For Jesus our Lord, the answer came when an angel rolled away the stone from his grave, not to let the Lord out, but to let the witnesses of his resurrection in to behold the empty tomb. For Job, the answer came from the mighty whirlwind when the voice of God healed him, confounded his foolish "comforters," blessed him twice as much as formerly, and extended his life to a full two hundred years!

Therefore when we struggle with the inexplicable sorrows and tribulations of our mortal existence; from these blessed words, we learn that for ourselves, as for Job, there is most certainly an answer.

"Why?… Why?… Why?... Why?" Where is the man who has not, in his heart if not vocally, cried these same pitiful questions when confronted with some soul-chilling sorrow? We have heard them at a thousand funerals; and always, the only recourse that men have is to, "Trust God where we cannot see"!

"Why did the knees receive me" Franks wrote that, "This question reflects a time when the father would choose whether to bring up his child or not. If he did, he took it upon his knees as a sign of adoption (Genesis 50:23), and then handed it to the mother or to the nurse."Arthur S. Peake, A Commentary on the Bible (London: T. C. and E. C. Jack, Ltd., 1924), p. 349. Interesting as this comment is, we cannot find any agreement with it in the text. The character of Hebrew poetry is that the same thought is often repeated in consecutive clauses; and the mention of his mother's breasts in the succeeding clause is overwhelming evidence that it is the mother's knees, not the fathers, which are mentioned in the preceding clause.

Anderson observed that, "The Book of Job knows nothing of the heaven of bliss or the hell of torment, but there is never a thought that death means extinction."Tyndale Old Testament Commentary, op. cit., p. 107. Note that all who ever lived, the kings and counselors, as well as the slaves and stillborn infants, do not merely cease to exist in the grave, "They are at rest."

Job 3:14-19 stress the cessation of all social distinctions in death.

"Wronged and wrong-doer alike with meekened face And cold hands folded o'er a still heart,
Pass the green threshold of our common grave,
Whither all footsteps tend, whence none depart."
- John Greenleaf Whittier

The meaning of some of these clauses is explained by the clause following. For example, the prisoners of Job 3:18 are not those in prison, but the captives who are driven to forced labor by taskmasters.

Barnes' Notes on the Whole Bible

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

Smith's Bible Commentary

Chapter 3

And finally Job spoke up. Job begins to curse the day of his birth.

Job opened his mouth, and he cursed his day ( Job 3:1 ).

Notice he didn't curse God; just the day in which he was born.

Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a boy that is conceived. Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it. Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it; let a cloud dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it. As for the night, let darkness seize upon it ( Job 3:3-6 );

You notice the repetition of darkness, blackness, darkness. This is Hebrew poetry. It's that repetition and all of a thought and of an idea with amplification upon it.

Let that night be solitary, let no joyful sound come therein. Let them curse it as the curse of the day, who are ready to raise up their mourning. Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark; let it look for light, and have none; neither let it see the dawning of the day: Because it shut not up the doors of my mother's womb, nor hid the sorrows from mine eyes. Why died I not from the womb? ( Job 3:7-11 )

Why wasn't I stillborn?

why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of her belly? Why did the knees prevent me? or why the breasts that I should nurse? For now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept: then had I been at rest, With kings and counselors of the earth, which built desolate places for themselves; Or with princes that had gold, who filled their houses with silver: Or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been; as infants which never saw light ( Job 3:11-16 ).

Why didn't I die where it would all be over with? I would have just been quiet. I would have never experienced anything.

There [he said] the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest. There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor. The small and the great are there; and the servant is free from his master. Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life to the bitter in soul; Which long for death, but it does not come; they dig for it more than for hid treasures; Which rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, which can find the grave. Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged in? For my sighing cometh before I eat, and my roarings are poured out like the waters. 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 in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet; yet trouble came ( Job 3:17-26 ).

Now let me point out, first of all, that you should not take the statements of Job in his misery and seek to develop from them biblical doctrine. For the Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah Witnesses, and others have taken these statements of Job here and they have developed the doctrine of soul sleep out of these statements of Job where he declares, verse Job 3:17 , "There the wicked cease from troubling; there the weary be at rest. There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor." He's talking about the grave. "Why didn't I just die where even the wicked is at rest? Where nobody is troubled. Where there's silence. Where there's nothing." Remember now the context. This is Job, he's crying out of the misery of his own experience. These are not God's inspired truths that he is crying. These are his endeavors to understand God and the ways of God. Job is actually challenging God. "Why did God ever allow me to live? Why wasn't I born dead?" And the reason why you cannot take these statements of Job as he is talking about death where there is no trouble, where everybody is at rest and peace and so forth, the reason why you cannot take these for biblical doctrine is verified in the thirty-eighth chapter of the book of Job. For after the vain endeavor of man to understand what was going on, God finally came on the scene.

And in the thirty-eighth chapter, when God began to speak to Job, God began to question Job. He said, first of all, the first question, "Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?" ( Job 38:2 ) Now what is expressed in Job is the greatest knowledge of the day. The philosophies of men and the wise men of that day. And God speaks of all of their speculations of being words without knowledge, which indeed they were. All of this counsel lacks real knowledge to it. It did. None of them really understood what was really going on behind the scenes. "Who is this that darkeneth words of counsel without knowledge?" And then in verse Job 3:17 , God said to Job, "Have the gates of death been opened unto you? Or have you seen the doors of the shadow of the death?" ( Job 38:17 ) Okay, Job, you've been talking about hey, I wish I were dead where everything is quiet, where there is no trouble. Where there are no problems. Everyone rests together. God said, "Wait, have the gates of death, have you been there? Do you know what's going on there? You know, you're talking, Job, with words that have no knowledge. You're talking of things you don't know about. You haven't been there. You don't know that that's the case."

Therefore, if you want to develop doctrine concerning what transpires to a person when he dies, you cannot go to the words of Job or to the words of Solomon in Ecclesiastes. Nor even to the Psalms, because many times these men were speaking of things of which they did not know. Expressing the ideas, the thoughts, the wisdom of man and the limited knowledge of man. If you really want to know what happens beyond the grave, you better go to the words of Jesus. Who knows better than He? If you want to develop doctrine of what happens when a person dies, you have to go to the words of Christ or to the inspired words of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. God rebukes Job because he's talking about something that he knows nothing about. Talking about death and what he imagines what would be if he were dead. But God says, "You're wrong."

Now there are those blessed, misguided saints who are just as ignorant as Zophar and Bildad and Eliphaz who take the scripture where Job declared, "What the thing I feared, the thing I feared is come upon me," and they say that was Job's problem. He lacked faith and he was fearing these things all the time, and you know, what you say is what you get. And so Job had this fear which shows the lack of faith. Had he had enough faith, this never would have happened to him. That's as stupid and ignorant as Eliphaz or Bildad or any of the rest of them that were trying to understand Job's condition. These men showed the same ignorance. Only they have no excuse for their ignorance because God had told us in the beginning what was going on. At least Eliphaz and Bildad, Zophar, they have an excuse for their ignorance because they weren't able to read the first chapter of Job to know what was really happening. But it is, well, I can't get into that. But it is so...it's not biblical exposition. It is sheer stupidity to use this scripture, to say, "Well, you know, the person, because you were fearing this, this is why it happened to you and all. The thing that you fear is going to come upon you." That is not true. You can look at David and he said, "I know that one day Saul is going to kill me." That's a negative confession, Dave. What you say is what you get. No, Saul didn't kill him. You don't have to be worried about making some negative confession. It isn't that God is waiting and listening and you make some negative. "All right, you said it so I'm going to do it." What kind of a God is that?

In the same token, you can make a positive confession for something that is not good for you and God is gracious enough not to do it for you. You don't control God, and please don't try. The world is in enough of a mess now. And it would be even worse if I were the one that began to take over and ordered the things that were going to happen. "

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

A. Job’s Personal Lament ch. 3

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

Evidently the passing of time brought Job no relief but only continued the irritation of his persisting pain. In chapter 2, Job restrained his words and manifested a submissive attitude. In chapter 3, his statements are assertive and angry. In this individual lament Job articulated a death wish. He actually expressed three wishes. Another way to divide chapter 3 is: Job’s curse (Job 3:3-13) and his lament (Job 3:14-26). [Note: Hartley, p. 88.]

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

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

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

Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible

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

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

o Homer. Iliad. 9. Vid. Barthii Animadv. ad Claudian. in Nupt. Honor. ver. 341. p Kipping. Antiqu. Roman. l. 1. c. 1. sect. 10.

Henry's Complete Commentary on the Bible

      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.

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

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

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

      II. He passionately applauds death and the grave, and seems quite in love with them. To desire to die that we may be with Christ, that we may be free from sin, and that we may be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven, is the effect and evidence of grace; but to desire to die only that we may be quiet in the grave, and delivered from the troubles of this life, savours of corruption. Job's considerations here may be of good use to reconcile us to death when it comes, and to make us easy under the arrest of it; but they ought not to be made use of as a pretence to quarrel with life while it is continued, or to make us uneasy under the burdens of it. It is our wisdom and duty to make the best of that which is, be it living or dying, and so to live to the Lord and die to the Lord, and to be his in both, Romans 14:8. Job here frets himself with thinking that if he had but died as soon as he was born, and been carried from the womb to the grave, 1. His condition would have been as good as that of the best: I would have been (says he, Job 3:14; Job 3:14) with kings and counsellors of the earth, whose pomp, power, and policy, cannot set them out of the reach of death, nor secure them from the grave, nor distinguish theirs from common dust in the grave. Even princes, who had gold in abundance, could not with it bribe Death to overlook them when he came with commission; and, though they filled their houses with silver, yet they were forced to leave it all behind them, no more to return to it. Some, by the desolate places which the kings and counsellors are here said to build for themselves, understand the sepulchres or monuments they prepared for themselves in their life-time; as Shebna (Isaiah 22:16) hewed himself out a sepulchre; and by the gold which the princes had, and the silver with which they filled their houses, they understand the treasures which, they say, it was usual to deposit in the graves of great men. Such arts have been used to preserve their dignity, if possible, on the other side death, and to keep themselves from lying even with those of inferior rank; but it will not do: death is, and will be, an irresistible leveller. Mors sceptra ligonibus æquat--Death mingles sceptres with spades. Rich and poor meet together in the grave; and there a hidden untimely birth (Job 3:16; Job 3:16), a child that either never saw light or but just opened its eyes and peeped into the world, and, not liking it, closed them again and hastened out of it, lies as soft and easy, lies as high and safe, as kings and counsellors, and princes, that had gold. "And therefore," says Job, "would I had lain there in the dust, rather than to lie here in the ashes!" 2. His condition would have been much better than now it was (Job 3:13; Job 3:13): "Then should I have lain still, and been quiet, which now I cannot do, I cannot be, but am still tossing and unquiet; then I should have slept, whereas now sleep departeth from my eyes; then had I been at rest, whereas now I am restless." Now that life and immortality are brought to a much clearer light by the gospel than before they were placed in good Christians can give a better account than this of the gain of death: "Then should I have been present with the Lord; then should I have seen his glory face to face, and no longer through a glass darkly." But all that poor Job dreamed of was rest and quietness in the grave out of the fear of evil tidings and out of the feeling of sore boils. Then should I have been quiet; and had he kept his temper, his even easy temper still, which he was in as recorded in the two foregoing chapters, entirely resigned to the holy will of God and acquiescing in it, he might have been quiet now; his soul, at least, might have dwelt at ease, even when his body lay in pain, Psalms 25:13. Observe how finely he describes the repose of the grave, which (provided the soul also be at rest in God) may much assist our triumphs over it. (1.) Those that now are troubled will there be out of the reach of trouble (Job 3:17; Job 3:17): There the wicked cease from troubling. When persecutors die they can no longer persecute; their hatred and envy will then perish. Herod had vexed the church, but, when he became a prey for worms, he ceased from troubling. When the persecuted die they are out of the danger of being any further troubled. Had Job been at rest in his grave, he would have had no disturbance from the Sabeans and Chaldeans, none of all his enemies would have created him any trouble. (2.) Those that are now toiled will there see the period of their toils. There the weary are at rest. Heaven is more than a rest to the souls of the saints, but the grave is a rest to their bodies. Their pilgrimage is a weary pilgrimage; sin and the world they are weary of; their services, sufferings, and expectations, they are wearied with; but in the grave they rest from all their labours,Revelation 14:13; Isaiah 57:23. They are easy there, and make no complaints; there believers sleep in Jesus. (3.) Those that were here enslaved are there at liberty. Death is the prisoner's discharge, the relief of the oppressed, and the servant's manumission (Job 3:18; Job 3:18): There the prisoners, though they walk not at large, yet they rest together, and are not put to work, to grind in that prison-house. They are no more insulted and trampled upon, menaced and terrified, by their cruel task-masters: They hear not the voice of the oppressor. Those that were here doomed to perpetual servitude, that could call nothing their own, no, not their own bodies, are there no longer under command or control: There the servant is free from his master, which is a good reason why those that have power should use it moderately, and those that are in subjection should bear it patiently, yet a little while. (4.) Those that were at a vast distance from others are there upon a level (Job 3:19; Job 3:19): The small and great are there, there the same, there all one, all alike free among the dead. The tedious pomp and state which attend the great are at an end there. All the inconveniences of a poor and low condition are likewise over; death and the grave know no difference.