Job breaks the silence, not with a curse on God, but on his own birthday. 'Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night which said, There is a man-child conceived' (3:3). Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it; why did he not die from the womb? He looks toward the grave as a strange mercy: 'There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary are at rest' (3:17), small and great alike, the servant free from his master. Why is light given to the bitter in soul? It closes in honest confession: the thing he feared has come upon him.

Drawn from Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory, Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary and John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament.

Context

Poetry · Unknown — Job overview

A. 1–10 Job Curses the Day He Was Born
B. 11–19 Job: Why Did I Not Die From the Womb?
C. 20–26 Job: The Thing I Feared Is Come Upon Me

Top cross-references8 chapters ▾

Jeremiah 203 verses
- Jeremiah 20:14Cursed be the day I was born! May the day my mother bore me never be blessed.
- Jeremiah 20:17because he did not kill me in the womb so that my mother might have been my grave, and her womb forever enlarged.
- Jeremiah 20:18Why did I come out of the womb to see only trouble and sorrow, and to end my days in shame?
- Read Jeremiah 20 →
Job 413 verses
- Job 41:1“Can you pull in Leviathan with a hook or tie down his tongue with a rope?
- Job 41:10No one is so fierce as to rouse Leviathan. Then who is able to stand against Me?
- Job 41:18His snorting flashes with light, and his eyes are like the rays of dawn.
- Read Job 41 →
Job 102 verses
- Job 10:18Why then did You bring me from the womb? Oh, that I had died, and no eye had seen me!
- Job 10:21before I go—never to return—to a land of darkness and gloom,
- Read Job 10 →
Job 142 verses
- Job 14:10But a man dies and is laid low; he breathes his last, and where is he?
- Job 14:13If only You would hide me in Sheol and conceal me until Your anger has passed! If only You would appoint a time for me and then remember me!
- Read Job 14 →

4 more chapters this one speaks with

Isaiah 142 verses
- Isaiah 14:3On the day that the LORD gives you rest from your pain and torment, and from the hard labor into which you were forced,
- Isaiah 14:10They will all respond to you, saying, “You too have become weak, as we are; you have become like us!”
- Read Isaiah 14 →
Job 302 verses
- Job 30:15Terrors are turned loose against me; they drive away my dignity as by the wind, and my prosperity has passed like a cloud.
- Job 30:23Yes, I know that You will bring me down to death, to the place appointed for all the living.
- Read Job 30 →
Job 72 verses
- Job 7:14then You frighten me with dreams and terrify me with visions,
- Job 7:15so that I would prefer strangling and death over my life in this body.
- Read Job 7 →
Ecclesiastes 61 verse
- Ecclesiastes 6:3A man may father a hundred children and live for many years; yet no matter how long he lives, if he is unsatisfied with his prosperity and does not even receive a proper burial, I say that a stillborn child is better off than he.
- Read Ecclesiastes 6 →

Cross-references from the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge and OpenBible.info.