Job 3
Big idea: The silence breaks with a curse, and its target is precise: not God, and not himself, but the day he was born and the night he was conceived. The chapter wants the beginning undone rather than the end brought forward.
Jeremiah 20:14-18 curses his own birthday in almost the same terms — the form is a recognised one, not a private breakdown.
3:1–10 — Let the day perish in which I was born
The poem is a curse laid on a date, and it is constructed like the creation account run backwards. Let that day be darkness; let God not seek for it from above; let no light shine on it. Where Genesis 1 says let there be light, this says let the darkness and the deep shadow claim it, let a cloud dwell on it, let the blackness of the day terrify it.
1 After this Job opened his mouth, and cursed the day of his birth. 2 Job answered: 3 “Let the day perish in which I was born, the night which said, ‘There is a boy conceived.’ 4 Let that day be darkness. Don’t let God from above seek for it, neither let the light shine on it. 5 Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it for their own. Let a cloud dwell on it. Let all that makes the day black terrify it. 6 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. 7 Behold, let that night be barren. Let no joyful voice come therein. 8 Let them curse it who curse the day, who are ready to rouse up leviathan. 9 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, 10 because it didn’t shut up the doors of my mother’s womb, nor did it hide trouble from my eyes.
3:11–26 — Why is light given to him who is in misery?
The second movement changes the question from why was I born to why did I not die at once, and then imagines the alternative in surprising terms. The grave is described as a place of rest and, above all, of levelling: kings and counsellors of the earth who built ruins for themselves, princes with gold, the small and the great, the prisoners at ease together and no longer hearing the voice of the taskmaster, the servant free from his master. Death's attraction here is not oblivion but equality.
11 “Why didn’t I die from the womb? Why didn’t I give up the spirit when my mother bore me? 12 Why did the knees receive me? Or why the breast, that I should nurse? 13 For now I should have lain down and been quiet. I should have slept, then I would have been at rest, 14 with kings and counselors of the earth, who built up waste places for themselves; 15 or with princes who had gold, who filled their houses with silver; 16 or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been, as infants who never saw light. 17 There the wicked cease from troubling. There the weary are at rest. 18 There the prisoners are at ease together. They don’t hear the voice of the taskmaster. 19 The small and the great are there. The servant is free from his master. 20 “Why is light given to him who is in misery, life to the bitter in soul, 21 who long for death, but it doesn’t come; and dig for it more than for hidden treasures, 22 who rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, when they can find the grave? 23 Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in? 24 For my sighing comes before I eat. My groanings are poured out like water. 25 For the thing which I fear comes on me, that which I am afraid of comes to me. 26 I am not at ease, neither am I quiet, neither do I have rest; but trouble comes.”
Scripture text: World English Bible (public domain).