Job 3--Job Laments His Birth

Job Laments His Birth​
3 After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. 2 And Job said:

3 “Let the day perish on which I was born,
    and the night that said,
    ‘A man is conceived.’
4 Let that day be darkness!
    May God above not seek it,
    nor light shine upon it.
5 Let gloom and deep darkness claim it.
    Let clouds dwell upon it;
    let the blackness of the day terrify it.
6 That night—let thick darkness seize 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 cry enter it.
8 Let those curse it who curse the day,
    who are ready to rouse up Leviathan.
9 Let the stars of its dawn be dark;
    let it hope for light, but have none,
    nor see the eyelids of the morning,
10 because it did not shut the doors of my mother's womb,
    nor hide trouble from my eyes.

11 “Why did I not die at birth,
    come out from the womb and expire?
12 Why did the knees receive me?
    Or why the breasts, that I should nurse?
13 For then I would have lain down and been quiet;
    I would have slept; then I would have been at rest,
14 with kings and counselors of the earth
    who rebuilt ruins for themselves,
15 or with princes who had gold,
    who filled their houses with silver.
16 Or why was I not as a hidden stillborn child,
    as infants who never see the light?
17 There the wicked cease from troubling,
    and there the weary are at rest.
18 There the prisoners are at ease together;
    they hear not the voice of the taskmaster.
19 The small and the great are there,
    and the slave is free from his master.

20 “Why is light given to him who is in misery,
    and life to the bitter in soul,
21 who long for death, but it comes not,
    and dig for it more than for hidden treasures,
22 who rejoice exceedingly
    and are glad when they 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 instead of my bread,
    and my groanings are poured out like water.
25 For the thing that I fear comes upon me,
    and what I dread befalls me.
26 I am not at ease, nor am I quiet;
    I have no rest, but trouble comes.”

---

After a week of silence, Job finally opens his mouth and speaks.  He's not yet to the point of wishing he had never been conceived.  He wishes that day to be forgotten by all and to go back in time and for that day to be blotted out and for no one, not even God, to care about the loss of that day.  He thinks it would have been better for him if he had died in childbirth.  This is some pretty dark and heavy stuff.  This is no normal depression, nor is it the talk of a man who is suicidal and wants to take his own life, nor is it someone asking his friends to take his life for him.  He's just saying how terrible his life has become and from where he sits at this time and place in his life, he imagines that it would be better to have lost all the good things in exchange for losing this bad thing too.

He says that he would have died peacefully (an indication that he did not believe babies who died in childbirth or a young age would have their souls tortured in hell, with as little or as much as he understood about hell at that point).  He would be gathered together with the "kings" and "princes" who had great wealth and accomplished great deeds--his end in death would be the same as theirs if he had died owning or accomplishing nothing at childbirth.  He imagines death to be a time of rest from all labor and a time of peace for the soul and "the great equalizer" in which there is no longer class or distinction between small or great or even slave or free.  All are equally at peace and rest from their work.  This is not to say that he thinks that he would simply cease to exist as it seems like here and other places in this book he understands that he would be conscious after death and has an eternal spirit that lives on.

Then Job essentially asks the rhetorical question so many ask--"Why do bad things happen to innocent pent (good) people?"  We Job start to slip even deeper into depression now as he says that he longs for death to come (naturally) so that his pain and misery will cease, but it is as hard to find for him as hidden treasure.  He imagines himself rejoicing when death will come upon him in the same way he would rejoice if he was the man the found the buried treasure or the pearl of great price in the parables of Jesus.  (Remember those from Matthew 13?)

Then Job says something interesting, God's hedge that Job knows is around him is not seen as a blessing, but as a curse.  If God would remove His hedge of protection and just let Job die.  He does not curse God in saying this, but he questions why God would protect his life when it would mean that he would have to go through so much pain and suffering.  Now imagine Jesus being fully aware of all the pain and suffering that He would go through on the cross and choosing to enter this world and be born with these words of Job in mind.  Wouldn't Jesus rather have stayed in heaven where He would be at perfect rest and peace, but He willingly gave up all of that so that He could be born to be beaten, battered and have His flesh torn and to die on the cross for you!  If Jesus had the attitude of Job here, all of us would be condemned, but the closest we ever see Jesus come to this moment is when He is sweating drops of blood in the Garden before He is arrested and is praying, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” (Luke 22:42).  The "cup" that Jesus is referring to there is the cup of the wrath of God that is He drank in full for us (see Jeremiah 25:15-16, Isaiah 51:17, 22, Lamentations 4:21, Ezekiel 23:28-34, Habakkuk 2:16, Revelation 14:9-10 and Revelation 16:19).  There are also many other places along with these that talk about God's wrath being "stored up," but Jesus drank of the wrath that all of the elect deserved and took it upon Himself.

Like Job, Jesus would be known as a "Man of Sorrows" and probably could take many of Job's words as His own.  His sighing and groanings would be like bread and water to Him, and while I'm not sure that Jesus experienced fear or dread about the cross, He did not long for or desire that moment, but yet took it on willingly.  Job finishes his lament by saying that as opposed to those who are dead, he is not at peace and has no rest and his days are full of trouble.  We'll see Solomon repeat much of this in the book of Ecclesiastics (in fact, part of me thinks that Solomon was reading the book of Job before writing at least some portions of that book--they were at least reading from the same sheet music if Solomon was not reading Job's notes).

Ecclesiastes 2:22-23
English Standard Version22 What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? 23 For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest. This also is vanity.
Yet Solomon knowing the end of the story will come to a conclusion that Job didn't actually arrive at.


Ecclesiastes 12:13-14
English Standard Version13 The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. 14 For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.
Life doesn't make any sense in the here and now and it is not death that will be "the great equalizer" but God's justice that comes after death that Job and all other men like him long for that will set everything right.  We must trust in the nature and character of God to be Just and to do justice in the life that is to come even when we feel that there is nothing but injustice in this present life and we don't see God's justice in the here and now.  The book of Job is essentially Job crying out against the injustice that he sees all around him--first in his own life, but also in the world at large.  We certainly can empathize with that with all the injustice that we see in our world today.  So this book has a lot that resonates with us.  We may find ourselves somewhat feeling we are in the place of Job (again, I hope we don't find ourselves in the place of Job's friends, but we need to be honest about that too if that's where we are in the story and not assume we are the protagonist).  If we are, God has a message for us at the end of the book, but we'll have to wait to get there as just like in life, you aren't really ready to hear what God has to say until you too have walked through the fiery trials of life that have refined you.