Job Chapter 3

From The Open Bible Project

3:1 After this Job opened his mouth, and cursed the day of his birth.

• (a) The seven days ended, (Job 2:13).
• (b) Here Job begins to feel his great imperfection in this battle between the spirit and the flesh, (Romans 7:18) and after a manner yields yet in the end he gets victory though he was in the mean time greatly wounded.

3:2 Job answered:

3:3 "Let the day perish in which I was born, the night which said, 'There is a boy conceived.'

• (c) Men should not be weary of their life and curse it, because of the infinities that it is subject to, but because they are given to sin and rebellion against God.

3:4 Let that day be darkness. Don't let God from above seek for it, neither let the light shine on it.

• (d) Let it be put out of the number of days, and let it not have the sight of the sun to separate it from the night.

3:5 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.

• (e) That is, most obscure darkness, which makes them afraid of death that they are in it.

3:6 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.

3:7 Behold, let that night be barren. Let no joyful voice come therein.

3:8 Let them curse it who curse the day, who are ready to rouse up leviathan.

• (f) Who curse the day of their birth, let them lay that curse on this night.

3:9 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,

• (g) Let it be always night, and never see day.

3:10 because it didn't shut up the doors of my mother's womb, nor did it hide trouble from my eyes.

3:11 "Why didn't I die from the womb? Why didn't I give up the spirit when my mother bore me?

• (h) This, and that which follows declares, that when man gives place to his passions, he is not able to stay or keep measure, but runs headlong into all evil unless God calls him back.

3:12 Why did the knees receive me? Or why the breast, that I should suck?

3:13 For now should I have lain down and been quiet. I should have slept, then I would have been at rest,

• (i) The vehemency of his afflictions made him utter these words as though death was the end of all miseries, and as if there were no life after this, which he speaks not as though it were so, but the infirmities of his flesh caused him to break out in this error of the wicked.

3:14 with kings and counselors of the earth, who built up waste places for themselves;

• (k) He notes the ambition of them who for their pleasure as it were change the order of nature, and build in most barren places, because they would by this make their names immortal.

3:15 or with princes who had gold, who filled their houses with silver:

3:16 or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been, as infants who never saw light.

3:17 There the wicked cease from troubling. There the weary are at rest.

• (l) That is, by death the cruelty of the tyrants has ceased.

3:18 There the prisoners are at ease together. They don't hear the voice of the taskmaster.

• (m) All they who sustain any kind of calamity and misery in this world: which he speaks after the judgment of the flesh.

3:19 The small and the great are there. The servant is free from his master.

3:20 "Why is light given to him who is in misery, life to the bitter in soul,

• (n) He shows that the benefits of God are not comfortable, unless the heart is joyful, and the conscience quieted.

3:21 Who long for death, but it doesn't come; and dig for it more than for hidden treasures,

3:22 who rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, when they can find the grave?

3:23 Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, whom God has hedged in?

• (o) That sees not how to come out of his miseries, because he does not depend on God’s providence.

3:24 For my sighing comes before I eat. My groanings are poured out like water.

3:25 For the thing which I fear comes on me, That which I am afraid of comes to me.

• (p) In my prosperity I looked for a fall, as it now has come to pass.

3:26 I am not at ease, neither am I quiet, neither have I rest; but trouble comes."

• (q) The fear of troubles that would ensue, caused my prosperity to seem to me as nothing, and yet I am not exempted from trouble.