Deeper Commentary

Job 3:1 After this Job opened his mouth, and cursed the day of his birth- Job although righteous was representative of a condemned Israel, whose "days" were likewise "cursed" (s.w. Is. 65:20). This is the essence of the representative nature of the work of the Lord Jesus, the suffering servant who description took Job as its prototype. He was ultimately innocent and yet representative of a cursed people, and like Job, through His intercession for sinners He could bring salvation for them.

Job will later lament that he has suffered for "months", so there is a considerable time period referenced by "After this...". I discussed on Job 1:21 how Job begins by blessing God without sinning, and then in Job 2:10 we read that he did not "sin with his lips", implying he maybe did in his heart. Now, we have Job cursing. And his words will later be rebuked by God and Elihu, and he will deeply repent of them.

By so strongly seeking death (:21), Job is in fact going along with the bad advice of his wife in Job 2:9- to curse God and die, to commit suicide. He has cursed the day of his birth- and a curse, once uttered, was considered final and to have somehow achieved what it asked for. His cursing his birth day and night of conception, wishing them to no longer exist in the calendar, is effectively suicide. Likewise he will utter seven curses, four against the night and three against the day, with language continually allusive to the days of creation. In :4 he basically says "Let there be darkness", alluding to God's "Let there be light". Paul says that God "commanded the light to shine out of darkness" at creation; Job says "May light not shine..." (:4). There was darkness upon the face of the deep, and God changed that. But Job wants that darkness to return. He wishes to un-create what God has created. This surely is not far off cursing God. The five references to "light" in Gen. 1 are matched by Job's five usages of the word "darkness". Job commands day and night to perish in :3 ["Let the day perish in which I was born, the night in which it was said, ‘There is a boy conceived’"], whereas day and night were created in Gen. 1:3-5. God's creative "Let there be..." is matched by Job's "Let there perish / not be...".

Job curses his birthday. His children had been judged by God with fire from Heaven for cursing God on their birthdays. Seeing life is given by God, he is getting dangerously close to doing what they did. Job's children were slain by Divine judgment despite his intercession for them. This is another hint that Job was counted righteous by God- this is one of the hints that he was not in fact in reality as spotless as God saw him.

Job 3:2 Job responded- "Answered". We could read this as Job's answer to his suffering. But the 28 other occurrences of "answered / responded" in Job are always of a person answering what another has said. Who is in view here, seeing the friends haven't yet spoken, and apparently neither God nor satan have spoken to Job directly? The only candidate is Job's wife. She has told him to curse God and die. And his speech now pretty much wishes to do that, and he implies that he had indeed tried to commit suicide, but death eluded him. He curses his birth and his whole existence [which was given by God], and wishes to die. This is just what she told him to do- to curse and die. As noted earlier, he initially responds well to her. But over time, he gives in. We recall that when Elijah likewise wanted to die in 1 Kings 19:4 ["I have had enough, Yahweh; take my life"], God responded by ending his prophetic ministry. So although Job 3 is his response to his wife, it is also surely directed to God his creator, more than lamenting that God had given him life, and wishing God's creation to be reversed, the "Let there be light" to become "Let there be darkness".

Possibly the idea of 'response' is an indication that Job was present at the dialogue between God and the Satan.

Job 3:3 Let the day perish in which I was born, the night in which it was said, ‘There is a boy conceived’- Heb. 'the night which said...'. He personifies darkness as a being, and sees himself as having been born out of that darkness. A great theme of the book of Job is that God brings light out of darkness, and is in control of the darkness; see on :4. 

Job 3:4 Let that day be darkness. Don’t let God from above seek for it, neither let the light shine on it- Job sees a chasmic difference between light and darkness; but the end of the book reveals the truth specifically taught to the exiles in Is. 45:5-7, that both light and darkness were from God. Job is seeking to undo creation, where God said "Let there be light" and created the first day. He is going wrong; this is beyond lament, this is wanting to undo God's creative work. 

Job 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- An allusion to the blackness caused by the desert sandstorms called "khamsin", which appeared to turn day into thick darkness. God noted that allusion, and appears at the end of the book in such a whirlwind, to reveal the light of His grace. The appearance of the "shadow of death" in the whirlwind shows that God is engaging with Job's words, but not answering. He shows that He in fact is in and through that "shadow of death". Job feels he is facing death, he wishes for the shadow of death to engulf him. But God's later comment is that "Have the gates of death been revealed to you? Or have you seen the gates of the shadow of death?" (Job 38:17). He totally discounts Job's experience, as if to say 'No, in fact you saw nothing'. Not the sympathetic response man looks for at all. But that is the point of the book- that this God is far above us, and in His final end, God taken to the final term, is very pitiful and of tender mercy.

 

Job 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 counted in the number of the months- The "thick darkness" continues the allusion to the "khamsin" whirlwind sandstorm (see on :5), which brings a palpably "thick darkness". As discussed on :5, God will later respond to this desire for "thick darkness" by saying that the darkness is somehow the bound for the seas of chaos, a limit to what evil can do to man. God "wrapped it in thick darkness, marked out for it My bound, set bars and doors, and said, ‘Here you may come, but no further'" (Job 38:9-11). The thick darkness which Job thinks is the final end for man, is in fact a limit which is under God's control and used to limit man's suffering.

Job 3:7 Behold, let that night be barren. Let no joyful voice come therein- More than wishing that his existence and birth would be somehow cancelled, the desire that his day of birth be "barren" would suggest "let no one be born in it". The restoration prophecies repeatedly use the word for "joyful voice" to speak of the joy which would again come from the restoration of Zion (Is. 61:7; 65:14; Jer. 31:7 and often). The blackness of despair which Job experienced was that of the exiles, and yet it could all be turned around, as happened for Job.

Job 3:8 Let them curse it who curse the day, who are ready to rouse up Leviathan-

These very words will be used by God in Job 41:1: "There is none fierce enough to arouse Leviathan". God mocks the idea that man can control Leviathan: "Can you pull in Leviathan with a fishhook or tie down its tongue with a rope? Can you put a cord through its nose or pierce its jaw with a hook?" (Job 41:1,2). The idea was that the mythical dragon, Leviathan, had the power to make some days of the year 'black days', and Job calls on magicians or anyone with powerful curses to get Leviathan on the job and blot out the night he was conceived and the day he was born. But God laughs at this, and says that not even the intensely angry Job was fierce enough to arouse Leviathan to do that job. In fact, God says that He plays with Leviathan as with a bird, and sets a banquet before him, just for fun (Job 40:29,30). Likewise Ps. 104:26 speaks of Leviathan as God's plaything: "this Leviathan You formed to play with". Job 40:19 LXX says the same of Leviathan: "This one is the beginning of the Lord’s shaping, made to be played with by His Angels".

Job says that the friends who came to mourn with him were “ready to raise up Leviathan” – or, as it can also be translated with allusion to the friends, “to raise up their mourning” (see A.V.). They thought that Leviathan, the ‘Satan’ figure they believed was real, could be blamed. But Job continually sees God as the ultimate source of what had happened to him, and understood the whole matter in terms of ‘how can a man be just with God’ rather than ‘how can a man get Satan off his back?’. A key passage is Job 9:24: “If it be not he, who then is it?” (R.V.); or as the G.N.B. puts it: “If God didn’t do it, who did?”. After all the theories of ‘Who’s responsible for all this evil in Job’s life?’, Job concludes that the source simply has to be God – and not anyone else. See on Job 1:1; 9:24.

Job 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- The stars of the morning rejoiced for joy at Israel's creation (Job 38:7 s.w. :7). Job wishes this to all be somehow annulled. But God's joy in creating His people would be finally justified in His restoration of them, as happened with Job.  Continually in Job 3, he asks for darkness to come upon him. Quite possibly God's response is in Job 38:2: "Who is this one darkening [My] plan with words without knowledge?". To just wish for death is a cop out. By doing so, Job was darkening God's plan. Job wishes that the night never sees the morning stars- that it continues for ever. God's response is that the morning stars sung for joy at creation (Job 38:7). His answers don't at all engage with Job's complaints nor questions, although His responses do allude to them- but in a way that ignores them. He is presenting Himself as so far above Job and his issues... and that is in fact His 'answer'; or shall we say, response.

Job 3:10 because it didn’t shut up the doors of my mother’s womb, nor did it hide trouble from my eyes- "Trouble" is the word used of Joseph's "trouble" (Gen. 41:51). Job was failing to see that his trouble had marvellously passed away and he was totally restored. God would save Israel from their "trouble" if they repented (Dt. 26:7 s.w.). "Trouble" is the word used in Is. 53:11 of the suffering servant's "travail of... soul". Again, Job was the prototype for the suffering servant.

Job 3:11 Why didn’t I die from the womb? Why didn’t I give up the spirit when my mother bore me?- Now begin the "why" questions... and this is exactly what God will refuse to answer, and even criticizes Job for. This whole depressive lament is more or less repeated by Jeremiah when in depression (Jer. 20:17,18). We can learn from that how we should turn to Biblical precedent and example even in the darkest times of depression. But further, we see how Job's experiences are again understood as the prototype for those of the righteous remnant at the time of Judah's sufferings at the hands of the Babylonians.

 

Job 3:12 Why did the knees receive me? Or why the breast, that I should nurse?- Job in the nadir of depression wishes that his mother had not placed him as her newborn child on her knees, nor offered her breast to him. Job here despises the nurture and nursing he was shown as an infant. God's response will be that He nurtures and nurses all manner of wild animals- baby lions, ravens and other birds, mountain goats... (Job  38:39,41; 39:4,30). And that is the wonder of His greatness. Again, as discussed on :9, this is not an answer to Job, but it is some kind of response and engagement. The simple point is that His horizon is so far wider than that of Job.

Job 3:13 For now should I have lain down and been quiet. I should have slept, then I would have been at rest- If Job had died as a newborn, he felt he would have "slept". He clearly understood death as unconsciousness, which shows that even in those early days, there was a clear understanding of death amongst the believers. For almost everyone else had ideas of an immortal soul consciously surviving death. But his whole argument is that death is unconsciousness. 

Job 3:14 with kings and counsellors of the earth, who built up waste places for themselves- This is rather similar to the description of Babylon's king coming to the grave with "all the kings of the nations" in Isaiah 14. The depressed Jews in exile likewise saw their destiny beyond the grave as being identical with that of their Babylonian oppressors.

Job 3:15 or with princes who had gold, who filled their houses with silver- Their houses could refer to their burial tombs.

Job 3:16 or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been, as infants who never saw light- The description of Miriam in Num. 12:12 LXX is quoting from Job 3:16 LXX; as if both Job and Miriam represented apostate Israel. 

Job 3:17 There the wicked cease from troubling. There the weary are at rest- Is. 57:20 identifies Job's troubled and 'not at rest' experience with that of the suffering, apostate Jews of the exile: "The wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt".

Job 3:18 There the prisoners are at ease together. They don’t hear the voice of the taskmaster- To liken God to a hard taskmaster with a harsh voice... is surely not far off cursing God. Job in his depression feels as Israel suffering in Egypt (Ex. 3:7; 5:6,13), considering that death was the only way out of the misery of hearing the "voice of the taskmaster". But he fails to see that out of that misery they were redeemed and restored to their land. This is alluded to when attention is drawn to how God's creations "hear not the voice, the shouts and curses of the driver" (Job 39:7). God's people didn't have to "hear" the voice of the taskmaster; there was a way of redemption offered.

Job 3:19 The small and the great are there. The servant is free from his master- God has repeatedly spoken of "My servant Job". But Job wishes to be free of God his master- surely not far off from cursing God. Job considers God a hard taskmaster (:18), just as the condemned one talent man in the parable does. Job was a master, but he now felt as a servant who wished to be free. Whose servant was he? Surely God's. Job even yearned to be free of God, a feeling he later expresses. But he never attempts to cut the ties totally; for he knows that by the nature of things, he can't. And he is later to be taught that those ties that bind were nothing less than God's love and saving grace.

Job 3:20 Why is light given- Job recognizes that the light is a gift from God, and will be brought to realize throughout the book, and especially in the speeches of God and Elihu at the end, that the darkness likewise is a gift from Him. And this was the truth which the exiles had to learn (Is. 45:5-7 is addressed to them).

To him who is in misery, life to the bitter in soul- Hezekiah, a potential fulfilment of the suffering servant who was based upon Job, was likewise given life when he was "bitter in soul" (Is. 38:15,17).

Job 3:21 who long for death, but it doesn’t come; and dig for it more than for hidden treasures- Job's desire for death was not fulfilled. And this stood for all time as a lesson of how the ties that bind in life, the sense of being hedged up and tied down in an unbearable position, are in fact the ties and cords of Divine love.

Job 3:22 who rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, when they can find the grave?- This was in Job's imagination. For nobody surely commits suicide with joy, and a final fear of death is part of the human condition.

Job 3:23 Why is light given- See on :20.

To a man whose way is hidden- see on Job 10:11,12; Is. 40:27. Job pretty much hates God because he cannot see his path forward. Simple trust in final salvation, having a Kingdom perspective, means we will not worry so much about our future in this brief life. "Hidden" is "obscured" / "darkened", "placed under a cloud". Finally the cloud of the whirlwind appears at the end of the book and Job finally realizes that out of that comes the light of God's glory.

Whom God has hedged in?- Job is feeling confined, imprisoned, blocked in. But this was what happened to Judah in their judgment (Hos. 2:6); Job although righteous was the representative of Judah. We know from the prologue that, as Satan observes, God had indeed fenced Job in. But for his good. But Job senses that fencing / hedging in- and sees it as God's unreasonable behaviour towards him. Just as the child sees 'hedging in' as parental heavyhandedness. We, along with Job, consider slaying all your kids with a Divine tornado... as not exactly hedging in. But finally, that was to be Job's path to eternity, hedged in by God.

 

Job 3:24 For my sighing comes before I eat. My groanings are poured out like water- But Job's "sighing" came to an end when he was restored. The same word is used of how the sighing of the captives in exile (Lam. 1:4,11,21,22) would likewise end when they were restored (Is. 35:10; 51:11).

Job 3:25 For the thing which I fear comes upon me, that of which I was afraid has happened to me- Job seems to be saying that the loss of blessing was what he had always secretly feared. This somewhat nuances his earlier statement that if we receive good from God we must also receive evil. The satan was again not far wrong. The material blessings did mean a lot to Job and he admits he feared losing them. It was not until he came to see their total irrelevance in the far bigger picture, that they were restored. For in the context of infinity, whether we are rich or poor in this life is of zero account.

Job's sufferings were a type of those of the Lord Jesus; and as for Job, so for the Lord, the sufferings of the cross were the thing which He had greatly feared all his life. Perhaps the thing which the Lord greatly feared, according to the Psalms, was feeling forsaken by God. And true enough to the Job type, this came upon Him.

Job 3:26 I was not at ease, neither was I quiet, neither had I rest; but trouble came- There are some very evident ways in which Job spiritually grew. Here he originally says that his life previous to his afflictions had not been a life of ease; but as a result of his suffering, he realized that actually it had been "at ease" (Job 16:12).