Job 3: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

After seven days of silence, Job speaks and curses the day he was born, asking that the day and the night of his conception be blotted out of the calendar. He then asks why he did not die at birth, and describes the grave as a place of rest where kings, prisoners, and slaves alike lie quiet and untroubled. He closes by asking why life is given to people who are in misery and long for death, and says that the thing he dreaded has now come upon him.

Claim by Claim

1. 3:1
   • After this, Job opened his mouth.
   • Job cursed the day of his birth.
2. 3:2
   • Job responded and spoke.
3. 3:3
   • Job said: let the day on which I was born perish.
   • Job said: let the night perish in which it was said that a male child was conceived.
4. 3:4
   • Job said: let that day be darkness.
   • Job said: let God above not seek out that day.
   • Job said: let no daylight shine upon that day.
5. 3:5
   • Job said: let darkness and deep shadow claim that day as their own.
   • Job said: let a cloud settle over that day.
   • Job said: let the blackenings of the day terrify it.
6. 3:6
   • Job said: let thick darkness seize that night.
   • Job said: let that night not be joined to the days of the year.
   • Job said: let that night not enter into the number of the months.
7. 3:7
   • Job said: let that night be barren.
   • Job said: let no cry of joy come into that night.
8. 3:8
   • Job said: let those who curse days curse that night.
   • Job said: those cursers are ready to rouse Leviathan.
9. 3:9
   • Job said: let the stars of that night's twilight be dark.
   • Job said: let that night wait for light and find none.
   • Job said: let that night not see the first rays of dawn.
10. 3:10
    • Job said the night is cursed because it did not shut the doors of the womb that bore him.
    • Job said the night did not hide trouble from his eyes.
11. 3:11
    • Job asked why he did not die from the womb.
    • Job asked why he did not expire when he came out of the belly.
12. 3:12
    • Job asked why knees received him.
    • Job asked why there were breasts for him to nurse at.
13. 3:13
    • Job said that otherwise he would now be lying down and quiet.
    • Job said that otherwise he would be asleep.
    • Job said that then he would be at rest.
14. 3:14
    • Job said he would be with kings and counselors of the earth.
    • Job said those kings and counselors built ruins for themselves.
15. 3:15
    • Job said he would be with princes who had gold.
    • Job said those princes filled their houses with silver.
16. 3:16
    • Job said that otherwise he would not exist, like a buried stillborn child.
    • Job said that otherwise he would be like infants who never saw light.
17. 3:17
    • Job said that there the wicked cease from raging.
    • Job said that there those whose strength is exhausted are at rest.
18. 3:18
    • Job said that prisoners are at ease together there.
    • Job said that they do not hear the voice of the taskmaster.
19. 3:19
    • Job said the small and the great are there.
    • Job said the slave is free from his master.
20. 3:20
    • Job asked why light is given to the one in misery.
    • Job asked why life is given to those bitter of soul.
    • The verse does not name who gives the light and life.
21. 3:21
    • Job said such people long for death and it does not come.
    • Job said they dig for death more than for hidden treasures.
22. 3:22
    • Job said such people rejoice greatly and are glad when they find the grave.
23. 3:23
    • Job asked why light is given to a man whose way is hidden.
    • Job said God has hedged that man in.
24. 3:24
    • Job said his sighing comes before his food.
    • Job said his groans pour out like water.
25. 3:25
    • Job said the thing he greatly feared has come upon him.
    • Job said what he dreaded has come to him.
26. 3:26
    • Job said he was not at ease.
    • Job said he was not quiet.
    • Job said he had no rest.
    • Job said trouble came.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

3:1

"Opened his mouth" is a set phrase in Hebrew that introduces a formal, deliberate speech, not just ordinary talk. And to curse something, in this world, was not merely to swear at it: a curse was a spoken formula believed to carry real force against its target. Job aims his at a date on the calendar.

3:3

Hebrew poetry pairs the two halves: the day he was delivered and, going further back, the night he was conceived. The night is spoken of as if it were a person who made the announcement. The announcement names a male child specifically, because that is what such a birth report would say, and a son was the outcome a household celebrated.

3:4

The wording deliberately runs the opening of Genesis backwards. Where that account has God say "Let there be light," Job says of his day, let there be darkness, and let God not look at it at all.

3:5

"The shadow of death" in the King James renders a single Hebrew word meaning thick gloom or deep darkness, the blackness of a place light never reaches. The older translation heard the word "death" inside it; the sense is darkness so heavy it swallows things.

3:6

Days and months were counted and recorded; Job asks that this one night be struck from the record, never tallied in any month, as though the calendar skipped it.

3:7

A "barren" night is one in which nothing is conceived and no child is born. The "glad voice" is the shouting that went up at a birth or a wedding celebration.

3:8

Two difficult lines. "Those who curse days" appear to be professional cursers, people paid to lay a spell on a chosen day and make it unlucky. The second half of the Hebrew word can be read either as Leviathan, the great sea monster of ancient Near Eastern storytelling whose stirring meant chaos and darkness (some think of the beast believed to swallow the sun in an eclipse), or, by a different reading of the same consonants, as mourning or wailing, which is the route the King James took with "raise up their mourning." The ambiguity is in the text itself.

3:9

The stars of the twilight are the last stars still visible before sunrise. The Hebrew for daybreak here is literally "the eyelids of the dawn," the first light showing like eyes opening.

3:10

The womb is pictured as a room with doors that can be shut. Elsewhere in Hebrew the same image is used for a woman who bears no children.

3:11

"Give up the ghost" in the King James is simply seventeenth-century English for "die." It carries no suggestion of a ghost in the modern sense.

3:12

Two things here. "Prevent" in 1611 English meant to go before, to meet or receive someone, the opposite of what the word means now. And the knees are a real custom: a newborn was laid on the knees of the father or a family elder, a gesture that publicly acknowledged the child and took it into the household.

3:14

The Hebrew literally says these kings built "ruins" or "desolate places" for themselves, and readers disagree about what is meant: grand cities and monuments that now stand empty, or the tombs and burial chambers rulers built to lie in. Both readings are old, and the wording allows either.

3:15

Rulers were often buried with gold and silver goods. Job notes the wealth only to say it makes no difference where they are now.

3:16

"Untimely birth" in the King James means a miscarried or stillborn child. Such a child was buried quietly and quickly, which is what "hidden" points to.

3:17

"There" is the world of the dead, called Sheol in Hebrew: a shadowy place under the earth where everyone who dies goes, without distinction of rank or conduct. It is not pictured here as a place of reward or punishment but as a place where everything stops, which is exactly why Job finds it attractive.

3:18

The "oppressor" is the slave driver or taskmaster, and the "voice" is his shouted orders. Prisoners of war were regularly put to forced labor under such a man.

3:19

"Small and great" is the standard Hebrew way of saying people of low status and people of high status, that is, everybody.

3:20

"Light" here stands for life itself, as "see the light" does in verse 16. The Hebrew does not name who does the giving, though God is plainly meant; Job avoids saying so directly.

3:21

Digging for buried treasure was a real and recognized pursuit; caches of silver and valuables were hidden in the ground in unsettled times, and people searched for them. Job says the desperate hunt for death harder than that.

3:22

A grave is the hole in the ground where a dead body is buried.

3:23

"Hedged in" uses the same picture as the accusation earlier in the book, that God had put a hedge around Job to protect him and everything he owned. Here the identical image has turned: the fence that kept trouble out now keeps him penned in with no way forward.

3:24

The word behind "roarings" is used of the roar of a lion. The first line can mean either that sighing comes to Job before he can eat, or that sighing has taken the place of food; the Hebrew allows both.

3:25

This may look back to chapter 1, where Job regularly offered sacrifices in case his children had sinned, because he feared exactly this kind of disaster. Hebrew verb tenses are flexible here, so the line can mean either that he feared it all along or that the fear and the blow arrived together.