Job 3:1-26

Job Curses his Day

Job curses the day of his birth. He asks why he did not die at birth: why should his wretched life be prolonged?

We are now confronted with a striking change in Job's frame of mind from that presented in Job 2:10. Probably a considerable interval had elapsed before his friends arrived. He complains in the speeches which follow of the emaciated state into which he had fallen, and that from being the honoured of all he had become a byword to his neighbours: cp. Job 1:3; Job 19:8; Job 30:1. it is evident from this chapter that he has been brooding over the miseries of his condition and the hopelessness of the future, and complaint has taken the place of resignation. The presence of his friends only provokes him to give vent to his anguish. In their silent amazement he sees as in a mirror the extent of his own misery. He casts himself confidently on their sympathetic comprehension, and freely utters the dark thoughts he has hitherto restrained. He knows that if left to himself he may lose the fear of the Almighty, and trusts that they will deliver him from this temptation. But an obsolete theology froze their power to help.

Job 3 - Job 42:6 are poetical in form, not in exact metre as if for song, but rhythmical for reading. The parts of which the couplet or triplet forming the verse are composed show a marked parallelism, the thought in one half corresponding to or completing the thought in the other. Job 3 is a good example.

There is much similarity between this chapter and Jeremiah 20:14, but the thoughts are those natural to the Hebrew mind, and we need not necessarily suppose them to be borrowed in either case.

3-10. Job curses the day of his birth.