ChristadelphianBooksOnline
David Baird
The Education of Job

Chapter 3 - Job's Opening Lamentations

Job Curses His Day

	3:1-2	Job breaks the silence
	3:3-10	Birth lamented
	3:11-19	Infancy lamented
	3:20-26	Manhood lamented

Job Curses His Day

3:1-2 Job breaks the silence

After the seven day silence Job speaks out first. Job had, as it were, completed the ritual test for uncleanness that a leper was required to undergo (Lev 13:26). Job had served his time and now his friends were ready to comment from the observations they had made in those seven long, silent days. Job's feelings at this time are reflected by the Psalmist:

"I said, I will take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue: I will keep my mouth with a bridle, while the wicked is before me. I was dumb with silence, I held my peace, even from good; and my sorrow was stirred. My heart was hot within me, while I was musing the fire burned: then spake I with my tongue" (Psa 39:1-3).

"In the end it was Job who broke the silence and cursed the day of his birth" (JB).

Brother Spongberg describes the dilemma Job was in at this time when he writes, "In order to understand Job's desperate plea one must remember that a long time had elapsed since his trials began, and he had been stripped bare of goods, family, home, relatives, friends. His wife, whatever her intentions, had been unsympathetic, unhelpful. His friends had come from afar, but seven days passed and they could find no word of condolence - there was nobody, literally, nobody, to whom he could turn - for God also, it appeared, had deserted him. The utter loneliness of his position gradually pressed itself upon him, and caused him to give vent to his three-fold cry of despair."

Job opens his mouth and curses (see comments on 1:5) but he does not curse God. Satan did not gain any victory in this speech. Job curses his day, his very existence, in a cry that falls into three parts. Job doesn't curse himself for his misdeeds. He simply wishes he was not there. He is not suicidal in what he is about to say. Nor does he call on Eliphaz, Bildad or Zophar to slay him. He curses his day in wishing that he was not alive to suffer the afflictions he was undergoing. Job is justifiably very depressed.

In 3:2 the word "spake" is normally translated throughout the Old Testament as "answer." The Hebrew word is anah and in this sense should, as Gesenius states, mean, "to lift up the voice, to begin to speak." Literally, the word means, "to sing." Job did not merely speak. He was lifting up his voice. He was breaking a harrowing seven-day silence. He was doing something much grander than uttering a few selfish complaints. The scene is now set for the poetry of the Book of Job to flow until 42:6.

Jeremiah echoed the sentiments of Job in Jeremiah 20:14-18 in a remarkable parallel to the three pleas of Job 3.

The first plea of Job (3:3-10) says basically, "Cursed be the day of my birth. Would God, in his mercy, not allowed me to be conceived." Jeremiah 20:14-16 reads, "Cursed be the day wherein I was born: let not the day wherein my mother bare me be blessed ..."

The second plea (3:11-19) can be summarised as, "Why wasn't I still-born, dying in my mother's womb?" Jeremiah 20:17 mirrors, "Because he slew me not from the womb: or that my mother might have been my grave ..."

The third plea of Job (3:20-26) - "Why should one be kept alive when all he wants is death?" - is reflected in Jeremiah 20:18 as, "Wherefore came I forth out of the womb to see labour and sorrow, that my days should be consumed with shame?"

Both Job and Jeremiah were despairing in that they failed to understand why they were suffering. Both were in depths of despondency but neither cursed God. Both these men of sorrow retained their integrity towards God as they were pushed to their very limits in trial.

3:3-10 Birth lamented

This is the first of Job's laments as he wishes he was never born or that he was not conceived. Job's grief is clearly evident as he harps on the concept of darkness (3:4,5,6,9) and establishes a number of parallelisms between day and night. In 3:3 Job proclaimed the day, a period of light, to be of no joy to him. He would sooner see the day perish along with the man-child born during it. The night when the proud husband declares he is going to be a father represents a disaster to Job.

How deep is the grief of Job. We cannot blame his friends as they have not yet begun to exacerbate the situation with their reasonings. Job exposes his deepest emotions after seven days of deathly silence.

3:4 commences another day and night parallelism. 3:4-5 concern the day and 3:6-7 are about the night. Job wants the day cursed. He wishes that God would have no thoughts for it - that the day be swallowed up in darkness. Would God, who controls day and night, have prevented the day of Job's birth occurring.

We read in 3:5, "Let darkness and the shadow of death stain (gaal) it." The term "shadow of death" is better as "deep shadow" (Gibson, NIV) whereas "stain it" (AV, NEB, CompB) is considered by a number of authorities (Gibson, JB, Delitzsch, NIV) to be better linked with its meaning "to redeem" (Strong). Gaal is translated throughout Scripture as "redeem", "redeemer" etc including 19:25 where Job exclaims, "I know that my redeemer (gaal) liveth." It signifies "to procure compensation for the downtrodden and unjustly oppressed" (Gibson). That is how Job saw his day of birth and he is asking that it be redeemed by darkness. Darkness can only be an improvement as it would have rescued him from the rest of his life. Yet in 19:25 Job has a different outlook. His redemption is not death, it is something living. It is not darkness. It is light. Job's laments in Chapter 3 are his first spoken words after seven days of silence and intense thought. His initial reaction was extreme but his later responses are tempered by his disputations with his colleagues.

The end of 3:5 is perplexing. Nobody really knows the correct translation. The context of "darkness" and "light" point the reader in the direction of supernatural obscurations of light, such as eclipses, that would, as it were, frighten the day so that it would not be able to show its face.

In 3:6 Job turns to the night of 3:3. He longs that darkness seize it. This would appear to be a redundant request as night is regularly overwhelmed by darkness. However, Job is using ophel, a different Hebrew word to that found in 3:4-5 for "darkness". Ophel means "darkness, especially thick" (Ges); "intense darkness" (CompB). In Isaiah 29:18 it is rendered "obscurity" in regard to a blind man. For Job, night was not good enough. He craves for the night of rejoicing over the announcement of his conception to have been absolutely black with darkness - devoid of all light. Job uses ophel in a number of places to reflect the depths of his misery:

i)	3:6	-	to despair of his conception;
ii)	10:22	-	to request death;
iii)	23:17	-	to emphasise his confusion at God's dealings with him;
iv)	28:3	-	to describe the limit's of man's endeavours; and
v)	30:26	-	to declare his personal frustrations.

He wanted that night of rejoicing to be removed from the calendar. It is to become "barren" (NIV, Roth, Gibson, Delitzsch - "solitary" AV) so that no human being shall ever be conceived or born or greeted joyfully during it.

3:8 inserts an interesting allusion to "leviathan" (AVmg - "their mourning" AV) and the verse is better rendered as, "Let those who curse the day curse it, who are skilled in stirring up leviathan" (Delitzsch). Eclipses were attributed to the work of a mythological dragon who as an enemy of the sun and moon would devour them until a wild tumult performed with drums and copper vessels caused the beast to disgorge its prey. Job's desire was for the dragon to devour the day of his birth. This does not suggest that Job was a believer in dragons and magical incantations. It was merely a poetical allusion on a subject he had already covered in 3:5. Job is referring to tradition without endorsing it.

Job leaves no part of the night untouched in his grief as he next decries the dawn. Let the final stars be darkened, let the light that night longs for fail to emerge, let the night not be refreshed by the "eyelids of the morning" - a reference to the sun's rays that reach out heralding its rising.

Why the bitterness against that day? It failed to prevent the conception of Job, it began a life that was to lead to its present misery. But Job was conceived so he asks the question in 3:11, "Why died I not from the womb?"

3:11-19 Infancy lamented

In this second lament Job bewails his infancy. He changes his approach from cursing to questioning. There is a progression. He wishes he was not conceived, but if he was that he would have died in the womb. If not that, that he had not been born, but if he had he would have died at once. As he has grown to maturity, he desires death. As far as Job was concerned, if he had died, by whatever means, he would have been better off. Death would mean the end of all miseries. He would have "been at rest."

The deepness of Job's depression is readily perceived, yet even as we read Job's words we can note a calmness beginning to surface. He is no longer questioning or cursing, moreso pondering the grave and those who go there. He recounts the great ones and the persecuted. He looks at the extremes of life; extremes that he had undergone. He was a man of wealth and wise counsel yet he wishes he was still-born. He built grand houses now he is the oppressed servant of circumstances. He was great now he is small. He sees the grave as the leveller, not the ticket to future happiness. Look at what the grave does:

3:14	The kings and counsellors who built large buildings could just as easily built ruins as the buildings mocked their splendour since in death they are no better than slaves;
3:15	The wealthy princes who could have filled their houses with silver find no value for silver and gold in the grave;
3:16	The middle point of Job's musings. It represents his ideal. To be still-born would have been better than the foolishness of riches or the torment of poverty;
3:17	The "lawless" (Roth) can no longer afflict nor are the weary worn down any further. Both are at rest;
3:18	The prisoners (i.e. those in forced labour) will be at ease ("rest" AV - *shaan* - not the same as "rest" in 3:13,17) and their taskmaster's (Exo 3:7) voice will no longer be heard;
3:19	The summary. Social inequalities are evened up in the grave. The two ends of the scale, the servant and the master, are brought together, along with the great and the small, in the grave.

3:20-26 Manhood lamented

Job's first two lamentations were meaningless. Why lament your birth or your infancy when you are a man? How can Job request that his birthday be obliterated and his mother be unable to nurture him when both activities had entered the realm of the irrevocable past?

However, Job's question in 3:20 was quite reasonable - "Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul?" Job moves out of the past into the present but Job has permitted his present circumstances to colour his appreciation of the past. Job's prosperity, family and worship were once sources of joy to him. Now, because his prosperity, family and worship have been either destroyed or altered, everything beforehand is tarnished. Job's desire for redemption is a request for death, not a request for deliverance and a fresh start.

Job wants death. He wanted death as keenly as a treasure hunter wanted success. How desperate was that? Thomson, in "The Land and the Book," explains: "There are frequent allusions to hid treasure in the Bible. Even in Job ... we read that the bitter in soul dig for death more earnestly than for hid treasures. There is not another comparison within the whole compass of human actions as vivid as this. I have heard of diggers actually fainting when they have come upon even a single coin. They become positively frantic, dig all night with desperate earnestness, and continue to work until they are exhausted" (T Nelson and Sons, 1890, p135).

Job would rejoice exceedingly if he found the grave. A peculiar expression because those who find the grave cannot rejoice exceedingly. They are dead. We can observe the gross gloominess of Job by the positive terms he uses concerning death ("rejoice exceedingly" and "glad" 3:22). "Rejoice exceedingly" implies great exuberance and is translated "shout with joy" (JB); "rejoice unto exultation" (Roth, Soncino). "Glad" has the connotation to "leap and spring" (Ges) and is used of the grasshopper in 39:21. Delitzsch translates it as "enraptured."

In 3:23 Job becomes less general and more personal. He repeats the question of 3:20. Why is light given, why is life prolonged for those who are in distress and long for death? The latter part of the verse sees Job declaring that God has hidden the way and it cannot be found. What good is life, Job complains, to a man if God has covered up the way? "Hedged in" (sakak) means "to entwine" (Strong), "weave, to interweave" (Ges) or "covered up" (CompB -see also Exo 33:22) and in the context of 3:23 has application to being restricted or straitened ("straitly enclosed in" Roth). It is not the same word found in 1:10 which means to shut in for protection. Job feels restricted. He feels trapped. In this last phrase we note the first indication of the tendency to regard God as his enemy. Job does not renounce or curse God. He detects the hand of God in his suffering.

His diet was now one of sighs and groanings. Job's trauma is accurately reflected in Psalm 42:3, "My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?" Job compares his cries to the roaring of a lion. Gesenius states that "roarings" (shagah) in this context refer to the "cry of a wretched person, wrung forth by grief." Shagah is also used of the anguish of the crucified Messiah in Psalm 22:1 and the traumatised David as he sought reconciliation with God after the sins he committed in relation to Bathsheba (Psa 32:3).

We can remember Job in 1:5 being diligent in his prosperity. Calamity struck anyway. The very thing he dreaded has happened to him. What was it? Versions vary as to the tense of 3:25. If past tense (AV, NIV), it would refer most probably to the loss of God's favour or protection. If present tense (RSV; "Whatever I fear comes true, whatever I dread befalls me" JB), then Job's present horrific torture, the unrelieved dread disease that wracked his mortal frame and threatened to upend his mind, was the object of Job's fear. All the dire developments that Job imagined, were now reality. Whatever option we pursue, and contextually the present tense seems most appropriate, Job does not know why this has happened to him.

The last verse of this opening speech sums up his present circumstances. It is made up of four sharp clauses; each stab like a knife. Andersen translates 3:26:

"I cannot relax!
And I cannot settle! ("rest" AV - shaqat - "repose" Strong)
And I cannot rest!
And agitation keeps coming back!"

What are we to make of Job's opening lamentation? Job is reacting far differently to the man who accepted his fate with humble resignation and recognition of God's ways in 1:20-21 and 2:10. However, Job's mind reeled in perplexity during those days when his friends gathered in awe-struck silence. Job assumed that as good came from God so too did evil (2:10) and that this "evil" would lead to death. Job submitted to what he considered to be God's wisdom and awaited death. Death did not come. "Where was God's justice in keeping a miserable man alive?" Job's statements are rash and set the scene for the criticisms he was to receive from his three friends. Were his statements right? Strictly speaking, no. He failed to see how that God could work through suffering. Job's ordeal ultimately taught him that. He had "uttered that I understood not" (42:3). At this point in time he had also lost sight of the future - "For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us" (Rom 8:18 see also Phil 3:8-11).

Job is set forth as an example (Jas 5:11). Let us remember the cause and final end of his trials, and exercise faith, courage and patience in our own (Heb 12:5-11).