Chapter Three

1–10. Job’s curse on the day and night of his birth. 11–26. Regret that life was given to him, and the motives for this.

Job 3:1. After this Job opened his mouth and cursed his day. In his first speech expressing regret about his birth and desire for death—a dead rest, peace in Sheol—Job begins it with a curse—a wish for evil (2 Sam 16:7-8; Jer 20:14) to the day and night of his birth, which served as the source, the beginning of so many disasters.

Job 3:2. And Job opened his mouth and said: “And spoke,” literally from the Hebrew—“answered.” Job’s speech, in which he does not acknowledge himself guilty, indeed serves as an answer to the secret thoughts of the friends, convinced of the sufferer’s sinfulness.

Job 3:3. Let the day perish on which I was born, and the night on which it was said: A man has been conceived! Job 3:4. Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, nor let light shine upon it! Day consists in the presence of light; the disappearance of the latter (“let that day be darkness”—v. 4) is equivalent to the perishing of the day (“let the day perish”—v. 3). The alternation of darkness with light, that is, the existence of day is established by God Himself (Gen 1:4); to Him Job addresses with a request so that He does not allow this alternation in the day of his birth and thereby fulfills the request for the day’s perishing.

Job 3:5. Let darkness and deep darkness claim it; let a cloud dwell upon it; let what blackens the day terrify it! An intensification of the thought in v. 4. Let in the hours allotted for light there reign a dense, sepulchral darkness (Job 10:21-22).

Job 3:6. That night—let darkness seize it; let it not be counted among the days of the year; let it not enter the number of the months! The night of Job’s birth should not pass into day; the darkness reigning throughout it should never give way to light. And since night makes up a certain number united with day, then by itself, taken apart from day, not having passed into it, it cannot enter either into the sum of the numbers of the year or the month.

Job 3:7. Oh, let that night be barren; let no joyful cry come into it! Luckless for Job, it should not be the time of birth (“unfruitful”) for anyone else; he will be unhappy, like Job. Under the condition of the fulfillment of this wish in the night of his birth there will be no joy which accompanies the coming of a man into the world (John 16:21).

Job 3:8. Let those curse it who curse the day, who are ready to rouse Leviathan! The fulfillment of Job’s wish can be helped by sorcerers, able by their power to rouse Leviathan. The expression “Leviathan” used in the Bible to denote terrible creatures (Ps 73:14; Isa 27:1) indicates, as some think, in the present case a constellation hostile to the sun and moon, swallowing them, thanks in part to the charms of sorcerers, and thereby producing an eclipse. The absence of biblical statements of the existence among the Hebrews of belief in such a constellation does not speak against the possibility of the given explanation: the author could use a popular belief not noted in the Bible. Among other peoples—the Chinese and Indians—it existed.

Job 3:9. Let the stars of its dawn be dark; let it look for light, but have none; and let it not see the eyelids of the morning! The night of Job’s birth should forever remain in darkness; it should never see the glimmering of the morning dawn—the “eyelids of the morning.”

Job 3:11. Why did I not die at birth, not expire when I came out of the womb? Job 3:12. Why did the knees receive me? Why did the breasts give me to drink? Forced to make peace with the thought of birth as an inevitable fact, Job still expresses regret for why he survived the initial moments of his existence: the moment of coming into the world (“coming out of the womb,” cf. Jer 20:18), the reception by his father on his knees as a sign that he was his son (Gen 50:23) and the time of nursing with the mother’s milk.

Job 3:13. For now I would have lain down and been quiet; I would have slept; then I would have been at rest, Job 3:14. with kings and counselors of the earth, who rebuild ruins for themselves, Job 3:15. or with princes who had gold, who filled their houses with silver; Job 3:16. or like a miscarriage that is hidden, I would not exist, or as infants who never see the light. Job 3:17. There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary rest. Job 3:18. There the prisoners are at ease together; they do not hear the voice of the taskmaster. Job 3:19. The small and the great are there; and the slave is free from his master. The ground for such regret is the consideration that death is better than life, and being in the grave is preferable to being on the earth. The grave is a place of complete rest, cessation of spiritual and physical suffering. In it rest the kings and princes, of whom the former tired themselves on the earth with cares for the settlement of desolate places—deserts (Hebrew “haraboth” ruins. Cf. Isa 44:26; Ezek 36:10), the latter—gathering treasures (vv. 14–15). In the grave there is an end to the cruelties of some and the sufferings of others: in it those who bore unbearable labor find rest, and those who never saw the light—prisoners in darkness—and slaves, whose life is one continuous labor (Job 7:2).

Job 3:20. Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in? Job 3:21. For I would choose strangling and death rather than this body. Job 3:22. I would rejoice exceedingly, be in raptures, if I could find the grave? Job 3:23. Why is light given to a man whose path is obscured, and whom God has surrounded with darkness? For Job personally death is desirable because it would deliver him from a distressing state—loss of understanding of the meaning of life. Life is a time of possible joys for a man: “light is sweet” (Eccl 11:7); but this sweetness is not accessible to him, troubled in soul; he cannot live and enjoy life. Why then continue to exist? Some relief in his current sad condition could be provided to Job by knowing the cause of his sufferings; but this is hidden from him; he is in the darkness of ignorance (v. 23).

Job 3:24. For my sighing comes before I eat, and my groanings are poured out like water, Struck by disease, having lost the meaning of life, Job experiences a state of mental turmoil, whose expression is constant sighing and groaning.

Job 3:25. For the thing I greatly feared has come upon me, and what I dreaded has happened to me. To this turmoil is added something else terrible, which he fears and from which he cannot free himself. In the present case Job alludes, perhaps, to those nightmares which he speaks of below (Job 7:14).

Job 3:26. I have no peace, nor am I quiet; nor do I have rest: but trouble comes. Experiencing turmoil, suffering from nightmares, Job cannot settle down for a moment.