BOOK 18 OF 66 · WISDOM & POETRY · KING JAMES BIBLE

Job 3

Job book home•Chapter 3 of 42•26 verses

Chapter overviewAt a glance + deeper study

REVIEWED OVERVIEW

Job 3 Overview

After seven silent days, Job finally speaks. He does not curse God, but he curses the day of his birth and wishes it had never entered the calendar. He longs for death and rest, describing the misery of a man whose suffering has overwhelmed his sense of purpose.

JobBook

3Chapter

26Verses

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Before you read Job 3

Coming from

Chapter 2 ended with Job and his friends sitting together in silence because his grief was very great.

In this chapter

Job gives voice to despair, wishing he had never been born and asking why life continues for the miserable.

Leads into

Chapter 4 begins the first debate as Eliphaz responds to Job’s lament with a moral explanation for suffering.

Key understandingExplore deeper

Job 3 is lament, not a settled theological system. Job’s language is intentionally raw: he wishes his birth erased and death had come earlier, yet he does not take his own life or curse God as Satan predicted.

Major truths in this chapterExplore deeper

Truth 1

Faithful people can experience profound despair and speak honestly about anguish.

Truth 2

Job distinguishes wishing he had never lived from actively taking life into his own hands.

Truth 3

The chapter shows why simplistic speeches from the friends will fail: Job’s pain is too deep for slogans.

Connections to the rest of ScriptureExplore deeper

Connection 1

Jeremiah 20:14-18 contains a similarly intense curse on the day of birth without making Jeremiah an unbeliever.

Connection 2

Many Psalms of lament openly bring despair and confusion before God.

Connection 3

1 Kings 19:4 records Elijah asking to die during severe discouragement, showing that such anguish is not unique to Job.

What is clear, and where care is neededExplore deeper

Keep this clear 1

Do not read every expression in a lament as a proposition God is endorsing as universally true.

Keep this clear 2

Job’s wish for death is serious, but the chapter does not present suicide as the answer to suffering.

Keep this clear 3

Do not rush past the emotional force of the chapter in order to defend God; the book itself gives Job room to lament.

Read Job 3 watching for…

The repeated wish that the day of Job’s birth disappear.

Job’s descriptions of death as rest from present misery.

The questions beginning with “Why.”

The difference between cursing his day and cursing God.

How the chapter prepares for the friends’ attempts to explain his suffering.

Chapter outline3 sections

1-10Job curses the day of his birth 11-19Job asks why he did not die at birth and rest with the dead 20-26Job asks why life is given to the miserable and describes his fear and trouble

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

And Job spake, and said,

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

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

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

As 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.

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

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

Let 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:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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