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Job 3

KJV · Chapter 3/42

1After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day.

2And Job spake, and said,

3Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man child conceived.

4Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it.

5Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it; let a cloud dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it.

6As for that night, let darkness seize upon it; let it not be joined unto the days of the year, let it not come into the number of the months.

7Lo, let that night be solitary, let no joyful voice come therein.

8Let them curse it that curse the day, who are ready to raise up their mourning.

9Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark; let it look for light, but have none; neither let it see the dawning of the day:

10Because it shut not up the doors of my mother’s womb, nor hid sorrow from mine eyes.

11Why died I not from the womb? why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly?

12Why did the knees prevent me? or why the breasts that I should suck?

13For now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept: then had I been at rest,

14With kings and counsellors of the earth, which built desolate places for themselves;

15Or with princes that had gold, who filled their houses with silver:

16Or as an hidden untimely birth I had not been; as infants which never saw light.

17There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest.

18There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor.

19The small and great are there; and the servant is free from his master.

20Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul;

21Which long for death, but it cometh not; and dig for it more than for hid treasures;

22Which rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, when they can find the grave?

23Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged in?

24For my sighing cometh before I eat, and my roarings are poured out like the waters.

25For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me.

26I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet; yet trouble came.

📖 Chapter study

Summary

After seven days of silence, Job finally speaks — but not to accuse God directly. Instead, he curses the day of his own birth. He wishes he had never been born and questions why life is given to those who suffer so greatly.

Explanation

This chapter marks the book's shift from narrative to poetry, opening the long speeches that make up most of the work. Cursing the day of his birth, rather than cursing God directly, shows that Job maintains his theological integrity even in deep despair — he laments his existence but does not blame God in a blasphemous way. The poetic language of darkness, gloom, and longing for rest in the grave reflects the literary genre of lament, also common in several Psalms (such as Psalm 88). Application for today: honestly expressing deep pain and despair before God, as Job does, is different from abandoning faith — sincere lament can itself be an act of faith.

Fun facts

  • The poetic structure of this chapter, with its elaborate Hebrew parallelism, is regarded by scholars of ancient Hebrew literature as one of the most sophisticated compositions in the entire Bible, comparable to the finest laments in Mesopotamian literature.
  • The theme of cursing one's own birthday also appears in the book of the prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 20:14-18), suggesting that this was a recognized poetic device within the Hebrew literary tradition for expressing extreme suffering, not something unique to Job.

Verse-by-verse explanation

  1. Job 3:1After seven silent days, Job finally speaks — but not against God; he curses his own birthday. It is a violent outburst, yet he stops short of blasphemy, only wishing he had never been born.
  2. Job 3:2“And Job spake, and said” is the formula that opens Job’s first speech — from here the book turns to poetry, and the seven days of silence come to an end.
  3. Job 3:3Job curses the very day he was born and the night of his conception — a shocking opening to the lament, yet he takes aim at the day, not directly at God.
  4. Job 3:4Job asks that day to turn into darkness, that God not even take notice of it — a deliberate inversion of the creation in Genesis, asking for one specific day to be erased from the world’s calendar.
  5. Job 3:5Job summons darkness, the shadow of death, and clouds to take over that day — images of total terror blanketing the day of his birth.
  6. Job 3:6Job asks that night to vanish from the calendar, not to be counted among the days of the year — he wants the date itself erased from existence, not merely darkened.
  7. Job 3:7He wishes the night of his birth had been barren and songless — no joy, no new life should ever have come from it.
  8. Job 3:8The reference to those “that curse the day” alludes to enchanters who, in ancient belief, could summon forces to ruin a date — Job invites them to take aim at him.
  9. Job 3:9Job asks the stars of that dawn to go dark and the light to never arrive — he wants that day’s sunrise to simply fail.
  10. Job 3:10Job asks why the womb was not shut, hiding all this pain from him — the first of several unanswered rhetorical questions in the chapter.
  11. Job 3:11Job asks why he did not die at birth — this is not a plan, it is the ancient lament genre pushed to its extreme, the same tone of despair found in a number of the psalms.
  12. Job 3:12He questions why the knees received him and the breasts nursed him — the very acts of care surrounding his birth become the target of his complaint.
  13. Job 3:13Had he died at birth, Job says, he would already be lying down and at rest now — death appears here as rest, not as punishment.
  14. Job 3:14Job imagines himself resting alongside kings and counselors who built great works now in ruins — death gathers everyone together, powerful or not.
  15. Job 3:15The mention of princes who filled their houses with silver reinforces the same idea: in death, wealth and status make no difference at all.
  16. Job 3:16Job says he would rather have been a hidden, untimely birth, never to see the light — an extreme wish to have never existed, not a plan to harm himself.
  17. Job 3:17The image of Sheol here is one of total rest with no hierarchy: “there the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest,” and even the servant is free from his master. For the ancients, death made everyone equal — king, slave, tyrant — long before any idea of heaven and hell as reward and punishment.
  18. Job 3:18He imagines Sheol as a place where even prisoners rest together, free from the taskmaster’s voice — another image of total relief in death.
  19. Job 3:19“The small and great are there,” and “the servant is free from his master,” repeating the idea of the previous verse: in Sheol, all the hierarchies of earthly life vanish completely.
  20. Job 3:20Job asks why light is given to those who only suffer — the central question of the chapter, left unanswered within it.
  21. Job 3:21He describes people who long for death the way someone digs for a buried treasure — the wish to die has become an active pursuit, not a passive one.
  22. Job 3:22Job imagines these people bursting with joy when they finally find the grave — death treated as the best possible news.
  23. Job 3:23“A man whose way is hid,” whom God “hath hedged in,” is Job speaking of himself — he feels fenced in by God, only now as a prison, the opposite of the hedge of blessing from chapter 1.
  24. Job 3:24Job says his sighing comes even before his bread — the pain has become so constant it interrupts even the most basic act of eating.
  25. Job 3:25“The thing which I greatly feared is come upon me” may echo Job’s own excessive worry back in chapter 1, always afraid that something might go wrong with his children.
  26. Job 3:26Job closes the chapter saying he has no peace, no quiet, only turmoil — the first speech ends without resolution, setting up the friends’ response.

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