Verse-by-Verse Bible Commentary
Job 3:2

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

"After this, Job opened his mouth and cursed his day. And Job answered and said:"

Writers have understood this to mean "after the seven days and nights of silence," but the text does not say that. "In the Ugaritic texts, `after this' introduces the transition to a new episode."The Anchor Bible (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1982), Vol. 15, p. 28, Here we have the beginning of the second section of Job.

Barnes' Notes on the Whole Bible

And Job spake - Margin, as in Hebrew, “answered.” The Hebrew word used here ענה ‛ânâh “to answer,” is often employed when one commences a discourse, even though no question had preceded. It is somewhat in the sense of replying to a subject, or of speaking in a case where a question might appropriately be asked; Isaiah 14:0:l0 (Hebrew), Zechariah 3:4; Deuteronomy 26:5 (Hebrew), Deuteronomy 27:14 (Hebrew). The word “to answer” ἀποκρίνομαι apokrinomai is frequently used in this way in the New Testament; Matthew 17:4, Matthew 17:17; Matthew 28:5; Mark 9:5; Mark 10:51, et al.

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

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

Job evidently considered his conception as the beginning of his existence (Job 3:3; cf. Psalms 139:13-16). His poetic description of his birth set forth his regret that he had left his mother’s womb alive (cf. Jeremiah 20:14-18).

"Leviathan [Job 3:8] was a seven-headed sea monster of ancient Near Eastern mythology. In the Ugaritic literature of Canaan and Phoenicia, eclipses were said to be caused by Leviathan’s swallowing the sun and moon. Job said, ’Let thou curse it [the night of my conception] who curse the day, who are prepared to arouse Leviathan.’ He was referring to a custom of sorcerers or enchanters, who claimed to have the power to make a day unfortunate by rousing the dragon asleep in the sea and inciting it to swallow the sun or moon. Thus, if the daytime or nighttime luminary were gone, Job’s birthday would, in a sense, be missing. Was Job indicating belief in a creature of mythology? No, he was probably doing nothing more than utilizing for poetic purposes a common notion that his hearers would understand. This would have been similar to modern adults’ referring to Santa Claus. Mentioning his name does not mean that one believes such a person exists." [Note: Zuck, Job, p. 24. Cf. 41:1; Psalms 74:14; 104:26; Isaiah 27:1. For fuller discussion of the Canaanite mythology involving Leviathan, see Marvin H. Pope, Job, pp. 329-31; and Smick, "Job," pp. 863-71.]

Job wanted to express in many ways his regret that he had been born. Evidently the reason Job longed for nonexistence was his failure to understand his relationship with God or his place in the universe. Job had many questions about the creation order. He seems to have realized that understanding his relationship to God and his place in creation required an understanding of creation. In clarifying Job’s relationships, Elihu and God also said much about creation. This appears to be the reason the creation motif is so prevalent in the Book of Job. [Note: See Parsons, pp. 145-47, for further discussion of the creation motif, and Leo G. Perdue, "Job’s Assault on Creation," Hebrew Annual Review 10 (1986):295-315.] An understanding of creation is indeed essential to our correct understanding of who we are and what our relationship to God is (Genesis 1-2). This is one reason people need to understand the Genesis record of creation accurately. [Note: Three fine organizations that provide books, pamphlets, audio tapes, videos, seminar speakers, etc. for all ages to this end are: The Institute for Creation Research, 10946 Woodside Avenue North, Santee, CA 92071; Answers in Genesis, P.O. Box 6330, Florence, KY 41022; and Creation Science Foundation, P.O. Box 6302, Acacia Ridge DC, QLD 4110, Australia.]

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.]

Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible

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

t ויען "et respondit", Pagninus, Montanus, Schmidt, Schultens, Michaelis. u "Clamavitquo", Mercerus; "nam proloquens", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator.

Henry's Complete Commentary on the Bible

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

      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,Psalms 39:3; Psalms 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,Ezekiel 3:15; Ezekiel 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 birth-day 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!Jeremiah 15:10. Cursed be the day wherein I was born,Jeremiah 20:14, c. 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 (Romans 6:7), is far better.Ecclesiastes 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 (Psalms 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, Matthew 26:24. But, on this side hell, there can be no reason for so vain and ungrateful a wish. It was Job's folly and weakness to curse his day. We must say of it, This was his infirmity; but good men have sometimes failed in the exercise of those graces which they have been most eminent for, that we may understand that when they are said to be perfect it is meant that they were upright, not that they were sinless. Lastly, Let us observe it, to the honour of the spiritual life above the natural, that though many have cursed the day of their first birth, never any cursed the day of their new-birth, nor wished they never had had grace, and the Spirit of grace, given them. Those are the most excellent gifts, above life and being itself, and which will never be a burden.

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

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

      (1.) That earth might forget it: Let it perish (Job 3:3; Job 3:3); let it not be joined to the days of the year,Job 3:6; 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; 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; 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; 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; Job 3:7); let it be a long night, and not see the eye-lids of the morning (Job 3:9; Job 3:9), which bring joy with them."

      (4.) That all curses might follow it (Job 3:8; 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 birth-day, 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; 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 29:22. 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; 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.