Job 3:1-26
Job Speaks
1 After this, Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. 2 He said:
3 “May the day of my birth perish,
and the night that said, ‘A boy is conceived!’
4 That day—may it turn to darkness;
may God above not care about it;
may no light shine on it.
5 May gloom and utter darkness claim it once more;
may a cloud settle over it;
may blackness overwhelm it.
6 That night—may thick darkness seize it;
may it not be included among the days of the year
nor be entered in any of the months.
7 May that night be barren;
may no shout of joy be heard in it.
8 May those who curse days curse that day,
those who are ready to rouse Leviathan.
9 May its morning stars become dark;
may it wait for daylight in vain
and not see the first rays of dawn,
10 for it did not shut the doors of the womb on me
to hide trouble from my eyes.
11 “Why did I not perish at birth,
and die as I came from the womb?
12 Why were there knees to receive me
and breasts that I might be nursed?
13 For now I would be lying down in peace;
I would be asleep and at rest
14 with kings and rulers of the earth,
who built for themselves places now lying in ruins,
15 with princes who had gold,
who filled their houses with silver.
16 Or why was I not hidden away in the ground like a stillborn child,
like an infant who never saw the light of day?
17 There the wicked cease from turmoil,
and there the weary are at rest.
18 Captives also enjoy their ease;
they no longer hear the slave driver’s shout.
19 The small and the great are there,
and the slaves are freed from their owners.
20 “Why is light given to those in misery,
and life to the bitter of soul,
21 to those who long for death that does not come,
who search for it more than for hidden treasure,
22 who are filled with gladness
and rejoice when they reach the grave?
23 Why is life given to a man
whose way is hidden,
whom God has hedged in?
24 For sighing has become my daily food;
my groans pour out like water.
25 What I feared has come upon me;
what I dreaded has happened to me.
26 I have no peace, no quietness;
I have no rest, but only turmoil.”
August 23rd, 2008 at 5:39 pm
From the Job Daily Guide:
Up until now, Job has been maintaining a very fine balance, equally mourning his losses and accepting with equanimity his change of fortune. At this point, though, he gives full vent to his mourning. I think what provokes this outburst is the fact that he can’t think of a reason to get up and move on. Job has lost his hope, and along with it his appetite for life. What’s the point of living, he asks, if you spend your whole life wishing you would just die already?
Job wishes that there was some way that his birthday could just be removed from the calendar, as if it’s somehow wrong that a day could exist which would honor his birth. Maybe he even fantasizes that if his birthday were to disappear, he too would suddenly vanish. Without a birthday, he couldn’t have ever been born. If he was never born, he couldn’t suffer. If he never suffered, he wouldn’t have to figure out how and why to go on living after his suffering.
Job’s sense of the value of his life has been shaken, and he’s having a hard time recovering it. What would you say makes your life worth living? Have you ever had a difficult time believing that there’s a good life ahead of you? What kept you going? What did you or would you need from God or others to reignite your hope?
August 24th, 2008 at 10:58 am
Sometimes its hard for me to really get in the picture of Job’s life….I guess the equivalent would be losing my job, having my house come crashing down, losing my family and being left with a physical infliction…yuck! That would be really hard to recover from - talk about faith being tested and what would you pin your life on to move on? It’s being stripped of life to the very bone and trying to find satisfaction out of nothing. That is hard! I think what I hear Job saying is he’d built his life up and had been blessed and the prospect of having to start over again (or something like that) seems doomed and he’d rather not have started out as all. I guess its that we didn’t ask to live, but are given life and left with choosing how best to live it, even with all the things that come at us.