Job 3 commentary

JOB 3 COMME TARY
EDITED BY GLE PEASE
Job Speaks
1 After this, Job opened his mouth and cursed the
day of his birth.
We have in this chapter the humor of excessive pessimism and cursing. Anything
that is done to such an excess that it becomes ridiculous is a form of humor. We
know because of future chapters that Job had a sense of humor, but he has
completely lost it at this point. He has gone bonkers over his fate and demonstrates
excessive pessimism like no one else in history.
After 7 days of sitting in silence and feeling the pain of all he had lost and all his
body was suffering, he opens up and the first thing that comes out is a curse on the
day of his birth. He has had 7 days to brood over all he had suffered and now he is
ready to explode with eloquent anger that he is alive. It is safe to assume that Job
did not want his friends to sing happy birthday to him anytime soon. He would have
cherished a happy death day, however, but there are few to no tunes for that
occasion. It is understandable why Job is miserable, but why he takes it out on the
day he was born is hard to understand. The day of his birth is innocent, and yet he
curses it to the greatest extent of language for cursing. Thank heavens the actual
date of his birth is not revealed, for that would be a very negative date for people to
be born. Even though this curse did not have any effect on the day, it would not be a
good omen to have your day of birth labeled with such a famous curse. So the good
new is, nobody knows the day which Job cursed. Those who fear the number 13 are
no doubt persuaded it was Friday the 13th, but this is pure speculation.
Job was not alone in cursing the day of his birth, for Jeremiah does the same thing.
Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me!Jer. 15:10. Cursed be the day wherein I
was born, Jer. 20:13. Both of these men had many years in which they gave thanks to
God for being born, and like everyone else they celebrated the day of their birth. It
is a form of folly to be cursing the day of your birth after you have already
celebrated it many times. That is why we have to assume that this sort of thing is
just a way of expressing how miserable life has become.

Solomon also had his bad days when he thought dying was better than being born.
He was not happy with his birthday.
A good name is better than precious ointment;
and the day of death than the day of one’s birth. Eccl, 7:1
So we have in the Bible three stooges who get so caught up in the negatives of life
that they foolishly deny the value of being born and having life.
Another great man of God, Elijah, had the same pessimistic attitude, but he did not
curse his day of birth, but just said, "kill me."
"I have had enough, Lord," Elijah prayed, "Take my life…" (1 Kings 19:4).
Jonah sat outside Nineveh and said, "O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better
for me to die than to live."
Others have felt they wish they could die and be done with this life, but they never
dreamed of cursing the day of their birth. Stedman said, “I do not know if you have
ever felt that way, but I think there have been times when I wished I could have
dropped out of the scene entirely and gone home to heaven.”
Martin Luther was typical of the great men of God who found themselves in the
dumps. Chapter 3 of Job could well have been one of his own songs of the blues. He
sounded so much like Job when he wrote, "I am sick of life, if this life can be called life.
Implacable hatred and strife amongst the great-no hopes of any improvement-the age is
Satan's own; gladly would I see myself and all my people quickly snatched from it." He
could not see the future and how his writing would influence millions all over the world.
Tim LaHaye has written some of the finest books, and one is, How To Win Over
Depression. He wrote this book because back in 1969 it hit him, and for two and a half
years he went through five periods of depression. The awfulness of it motivated him to
seek answers, and to help others to gain victory. Vance Havner went through great
depression when his wife died, and he wrote, Though I Walk Through The Valley, to help
others who go that same way.
History is filled with words of pessimism about life and the wish that they were dead, but
as we read them we will notice that Job's is different in that he was not content to wish
he was dead, but he wished that the day of his birth was dead, and that it never existed.
Some just want to be dead because they are too lazy to live. Such is the idea behind this
little verse:
Things get so much harder
When we have to leave our bed
Wouldn't life be easier
If we were just dead?
Others wish they were dead because of failure to keep a love relationship going.

Song: I Wish I Was Dead Lyrics
DIANA DREAM:
I'm blue, my life is through.
I thought I had a date with you,
I guess I just don't rate with you,
I wish I was dead - and buried!!
I'm blue, a cast-off shoe,
I'll break right down and cry tonight,
'Cause you told me a lie tonight,
I wish I was dead - and buried!!
Others have a life of rejection and just don’t seem to fit in, and so would rather be
dead. A girl writes-
Why do people always pick on me?
That’s what I want to know!
I feel lonely and no-one cares about me.
I know that my parents wish I was dead!
It’s pretty obvious that they don’t care about me!
I wish I was dead myself.
At least that way I wouldn’t have so much misery in my life!
The teachers at school just ignore me when I ask for help!
I get so upset that I cut myself every night,
I got out of it but, I couldn’t resist the temptation to do it again!
I wish was dead!
At least that way I wouldn’t have to try and impress people,
And at least I wouldn’t have people saying that I’m fat
And that I smell!
And physically and mentally bully me every time they see me!
I know I may be some of the things that they call me,
But I know I am and they don’t always have to tell me.
I just wish I was dead!!!!!!!!!
A boy writes-
I wish I was dead. I wish I had never been born. My life has sucked for as long as I can
remember. Abuse, medical problems, dead brother, financial problems, and on and on and on.
I can never seem to get a break. I wish I'd have a car wreck today and be done with it. I'm
worthless. I wish I wish I wish I was dead.
He quotes one man as saying, "It took me almost a year to get over it! I had never been
depressed in my life until my wife left me. Suddenly the carpet was jerked out from under my
whole life. For weeks I just wanted to die."
From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:
Some folk like music, some folk like tea, Some folk like
women, they're not for me. Here is my motto, simple and
terse: Everything;s lousy, and going to get worse! Oh, I wish

Oh, I wish Man had never evolved from a fish. Oh, I wish I
were dead, Wish I'd been dropped on my head, Broken my
neck, lost the toss with a bull, Parachute jumped and
forgotten to pull, Oh, I long to be dead, Wrapped in a casket of
lead, Wish I'd been drowned in a barrel of trout, Dived off the
pier when the tide was still out.
The grave, the grave,
Is a fine and private place,
The grave, the grave,
And who the devil wants to embrace?
I wish, I wish I were dead,
Laid out with a lilly in bed,
Wish that I'd drunk some carbolic for fun,
Tested the trigger while cleaning my gun,
Or just shrivelled up in the heat of the sun,
Oh, I wish I were dead, dead, dead,
Oh, I wish I were,
Oh, I wish I were,
Oh, I wish I were,
I wish I was dead.
The fact is, millions really feel this way, but they do not curse the day of
their birth. It is strange to do such a thing, and strange is funny. It is
funny to think that one whole chapter of the Bible is about cursing of
one's birthday. Is God joking with us, to give us a whole chapter of his
revelation dealing with cursing the day of birth? We need to see the
psychology of this to understand its value. Satan said Job would curse
God to his face if he lost all. Job had to have feelings of unbelievable anger
at God and the mystery of why he was suffering all this tragedy. He was
ready to explode, but he found an outlet for his anger and depression.
Instead of cursing God, he cursed the day of his birth, and he went on and

on to excess because he was so filled with negative emotions and he needed
to release them or Satan would win the battle, for he would curse God.
This chapter is about releasing pent up emotions that can lead to
damaging sin by finding an object to hurl them at that does not hurt man
or God. It is really quite clever of Job, for it is wisdom in action. It is like
taking out your frustration by hitting a pillow rather than the neighbor
that is driving you batty. Couples in conflict are encouraged to have
pillow fights to release their anger. As they batter one another they will
end up laughing and release all the emotions that makes them want to
strangle each other. Anytime an inanimate object can be the focus for
releasing your anger you have won a major battle, and that is what we see
Job doing in this chapter. Job goes the final step and chooses to release his
anger at what is not even an object, but a day, and not a soul in all the
world will be injured or even affected by this curse. It is the most violent
curse of a day ever, and yet it is less hurtful to anyone than striking the
side of a steel building with a feather. It is horrible in its expression, but
harmless in it effect.
Job would have been sorry had his curse worked, for after all was back to normal
he would have had no day for his birthday celebration. His failure in curse success
means that millions around the world still celebrate that cursed day never knowing
that it was the focus of such a curse.
It is hard to identify with this curse, but more easily do we identify with
the so-called parental curse. Lisa Barker writes, “ If you've ever had
parents, then you've heard of the parental curse. That's when your
mother or father, in complete and utter frustration, looks you straight in
the eye and says: When you grow up, I hope you have a child that behaves
just like you do.” This makes some sense, for you want your kids to
understand why you treated them the way you did, and they can only
understand by having to endure the same behavior in their kids. This is a

good curse, that is, if fulfilled in moderation. But Job’s is bad even if it
cannot be fulfilled, for it is a denial and rejection of all the good that he
had experienced in life. Had he died with his children, it still would have
been a wonderful life, and so it was folly to cast it all away as if never to
have been would have been a blessing. It was a blessing to have lived the
life of Job, for he pleased God.
BAR ES, "After this - Dr. Good renders this, “at length.” It means after the long
silence of his friends, and after he saw that there was no prospect of relief or of
consolation.
Opened Job his mouth - The usual formula in Hebrew to denote thc
commencement of a speech; see Mat_5:2. Schultens contends that it means boldness
and vehemency of speech, παሜምησία parrēsia, or an opening of the mouth for the purpose
of accusing, expostulating, or complaining; or to begin to utter some sententious,
profound, or sublime maxim; and in support of this he appeals to Psa_78:2, ard Pro_
8:6. There is probably, however nothing more intended than to begin to speak. It is in
accordance with Oriental views, where an act of speaking is regarded as a grave and
important matter, and is entered on with much deliberation. Blackwell (Life of Homer,
p. 43) remarks that the Turks, Arabs, Hindoos, and the Orientals in general, have little
inclination to society and to general conversation, that they seldom speak, and that their
speeches are sententious and brief, unless they are much excited. With such men, to
make a speech is a serious matter, as is indicated by the manner in which their
discourses are commonly introduced: “I will open my mouth,” or they “opened the
mouth,” implying great deliberation and gravity. This phrase occurs often in Homer,
Hesiod, Orpheus, and in Virgil (compare Aeneid vi. 75), as well as in the Bible. See
Burder, in Rosenmuller’s Morgenland, “in loc.”
And cursed his day - The word rendered “curse” here, ‫קלל‬ qâlal is different from
that used in Job_1:11; Job_2:9. It is the proper word to denote “to curse.” The Syriac
adds, “the day in which he was born.” A similar expression occurs in Klopstock’s
Messias, Ges. iii.
Wenn nun, aller Kinder beraubt, die verzweifelude Mutter,
Wuthend dem Tag. an dem sie gebahr, und gebohren ward, fluchet.
“When now of all her children robbed, the desperate mother enraged
Curses the day in which she bare, and was borne.”
CLARKE, "After this opened Job his mouth - After the seven days’ mourning
was over, there being no prospect of relief, Job is represented as thus cursing the day of
his birth. Here the poetic part of the book begins; for most certainly there is nothing in
the preceding chapters either in the form or spirit of Hebrew poetry. It is easy indeed to
break the sentences into hemistichs; but this does not constitute them poetry: for,

although Hebrew poetry is in general in hemistichs, yet it does not follow that the
division of narrative into hemistichs must necessarily constitute it poetry.
In many cases the Asiatic poets introduce their compositions with prose narrative; and
having in this way prepared the reader for what he is to expect, begin their deevans,
cassidehs, gazels, etc. This appears to be the plan followed by the author of this book.
Those who still think, after examining the structure of those chapters, and comparing
them with the undoubted poetic parts of the book, that they also, and the ten concluding
verses, are poetry, have my consent, while I take the liberty to believe most decidedly the
opposite.
Cursed his day - That is, the day of his birth; and thus he gave vent to the agonies of
his soul, and the distractions of his mind. His execrations have something in them
awfully solemn, tremendously deep, and strikingly sublime. But let us not excuse all the
things which he said in his haste, and in the bitterness of his soul, because of his former
well established character of patience. He bore all his privations with becoming
resignation to the Divine will and providence: but now, feeling himself the subject of
continual sufferings, being in heaviness through manifold temptation, and probably
having the light of God withdrawn from his mind, as his consolations most undoubtedly
were, he regrets that ever he was born; and in a very high strain of impassioned poetry
curses his day. We find a similar execration to this in Jeremiah, Jer_20:14-18, and in
other places; which, by the way, are no proofs that the one borrowed from the other; but
that this was the common mode of Asiatic thinking, speaking, and feeling, on such
occasions.
GILL, "After this opened Job his mouth,.... order to speak, and began to speak of
his troubles and afflictions, and the sense he had of them; for though, this phrase may
sometimes signify to speak aloud, clearly and distinctly, and with great freedom and
boldness, yet here it seems to design no more than beginning to speak, or breaking
silence after it had been long kept: be spake after his first trial and blessed the name of
the Lord, and upon his second, and reproved his wife for her foolish speaking; but upon
the visit of his three friends, and during the space of seven days, a profound silence was
kept by him and them; and when he perceived that they chose not to speak to him, and
perhaps his distemper also decreased, and his pain somewhat abated, he broke out into
the following expressions:
and cursed his day: he did not curse his God, as Satan said he would, and his wife
advised him to: nor did he curse his fellow creatures, or his friends, as wicked men in
passion are apt to do, nor did he curse himself, as profane persons often do, when any
evil befalls them; but he cursed his day; not the day on which his troubles came upon
him, for there were more than one, and they were still continued, but the day of his
birth, as appears from Job_3:3; and so the Syriac and Arabic versions add here, "in
which he was born"; and what is meant by cursing it may be learnt from his own words
in the following verses, the substance of which is, that he wished either it had never
been, or he had never been born; but since that was impossible, that it might be
forgotten, and never observed or had in esteem, but be buried oblivion and obscurity,
and be branded with a black mark, as an unhappy day, for ever: the word (s) signifies, he
made light of it, and spoke slightly and contemptibly of it; he disesteemed it, yea,
detested it, and could not bear to think of it, and desired that it might be disrespected by
God and men; so that there is no need of such questions, whether it is in the power of
man to curse? and whether it is lawful to curse the creature? and whether a day is

capable of a curse? The frame of mind in which Job was when he uttered these words is
differently represented; some of the Jewish writers will have it that he denied the
providence of God, and thought that all things depended upon the stars, or planets
which rule on the day a man is born, and therefore cursed his stars; whereas nothing is
more evident than that Job ascribes all that befell him to the purpose and providence of
God, Job_23:14; some say he was in the utmost despair, and had no hope of eternal life
and salvation, but the contrary to this is clear from Job_13:15; and many think he had
lost all patience, for which he was so famous; but if he had, he would not have been so
highly spoken of as he is in Jam_5:11; it is true indeed there may be a mixture of
weakness with respect to the exercise of that grace at this time, and which may appear in
some after expressions of his; yet were it not for these and the like, as we could not have
such an idea of his sorrows and afflictions, and of that quick sense and perception he had
of them, so neither of his exceeding great patience in enduring them as he did; and,
besides, what impatience he was guilty of was not only graciously forgiven, but he
through the grace of God was enabled to conquer; and patience had its perfect work in
him, and he persevered therein to the end; though after all he is not to be excused of
weakness and infirmity, since he is blamed not only by Elihu, but by the Lord himself;
yea, Job himself owned his sin and folly, and repented of it, Job_40:4.
HE RY 1-2, "Long was Job's heart hot within him; and, while he was musing, the
fire burned, and the more for being stifled and suppressed. At length he spoke with his
tongue, but not such a good word as David spoke after a long pause: Lord, make me to
know my end, Psa_39:3, Psa_39:4. Seven days the prophet Ezekiel sat down astonished
with the captives, and then (probably on the sabbath day) the word of the Lord came to
him, Eze_3:15, Eze_3:16. So long Job and his friends sat thinking, but said nothing; they
were afraid of speaking what they thought, lest they should grieve him, and he durst not
give vent to his thoughts, lest he should offend them. They came to comfort him, but,
finding his afflictions very extraordinary, they began to think comfort did not belong to
him, suspecting him to be a hypocrite, and therefore they said nothing. But losers think
they may have leave to speak, and therefore Job first gives vent to his thoughts. Unless
they had been better, it would however have been well if he had kept them to himself. In
short, he cursed his day, the day of his birth, wished he had never been born, could not
think or speak of his own birth without regret and vexation. Whereas men usually
observe the annual return of their birthday with rejoicing, he looked upon it as the
unhappiest day of the year, because the unhappiest of his life, being the inlet into all his
woe. Now,
I. This was bad enough. The extremity of his trouble and the discomposure of his
spirits may excuse it in part, but he can by no means be justified in it. Now he has
forgotten the good he was born to, the lean kine have eaten up the fat ones, and he is
filled with thoughts of the evil only, and wishes he had never been born. The prophet
Jeremiah himself expressed his painful sense of his calamities in language not much
unlike this: Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me! Jer_15:10. Cursed be the
day wherein I was born, Jer_20:14, etc. We may suppose that Job in his prosperity had
many a time blessed God for the day of his birth, and reckoned it a happy day; yet now
he brands it with all possible marks of infamy. When we consider the iniquity in which
we were conceived and born we have reason enough to reflect with sorrow and shame
upon the day of our birth, and to say that the day of our death, by which we are freed
from sin (Rom_6:7), is far better. Ecc_7:1. But to curse the day of our birth because then
we entered upon the calamitous scene of life is to quarrel with the God of nature, to
despise the dignity of our being, and to indulge a passion which our own calm and sober

thoughts will make us ashamed of. Certainly there is no condition of life a man can be in
in this world but he may in it (if it be not his own fault) so honour God, and work out his
own salvation, and make sure a happiness for himself in a better world, that he will have
no reason at all to wish he had never been born, but a great deal of reason to say that he
had his being to good purpose. Yet it must be owned, if there were not another life after
this, and divine consolations to support us in the prospect of it, so many are the sorrows
and troubles of this that we might sometimes be tempted to say that we were made in
vain (Psa_89:47), and to wish we had never been. There are those in hell who with good
reason wish they had never been born, as Judas, Mat_26:24. But, on this side hell, there
can be no reason for so vain and ungrateful a wish. It was Job's folly and weakness to
curse his day. We must say of it, This was his infirmity; but good men have sometimes
failed in the exercise of those graces which they have been most eminent for, that we
may understand that when they are said to be perfect it is meant that they were upright,
not that they were sinless. Lastly, Let us observe it, to the honour of the spiritual life
above the natural, that though many have cursed the day of their first birth, never any
cursed the day of their new-birth, nor wished they never had had grace, and the Spirit of
grace, given them. Those are the most excellent gifts, above life and being itself, and
which will never be a burden.
II. Yet it was not so bad as Satan promised himself. Job cursed his day, but he did not
curse his God - was weary of his life, and would gladly have parted with that, but not
weary of his religion; he resolutely cleaves to that, and will never let it go. The dispute
between God and Satan concerning Job was not whether Job had his infirmities, and
whether he was subject to like passions as we are (that was granted), but whether he was
a hypocrite, who secretly hated God, and if he were provoked, would show his hatred;
and, upon trial, it proved that he was no such man. Nay, all this may consist with his
being a pattern of patience; for, though he did thus speak unadvisedly with his lips, yet
both before and after he expressed great submission and resignation to the holy will of
God and repented of his impatience; he condemned himself for it, and therefore God did
not condemn him, nor must we, but watch the more carefully over ourselves, lest we sin
after the similitude of this transgression.
1. The particular expressions which Job used in cursing his day are full of poetical
fancy, flame, and rapture, and create as much difficulty to the critics as the thing itself
does to the divines: we need not be particular in our observations upon them. When he
would express his passionate wish that he had never been, he falls foul upon the day, and
wishes,
JAMISO , "Job_3:1-19. Job curses the day of his birth and wishes for death.
opened his mouth — The Orientals speak seldom, and then sententiously; hence
this formula expressing deliberation and gravity (Psa_78:2). He formally began.
cursed his day — the strict Hebrew word for “cursing:” not the same as in Job_1:5.
Job cursed his birthday, but not his God.
K&D, "Job's first longer utterance now commences, by which he involved himself in
the conflict, which is his seventh temptation or trial.
1, 2 After this Job opened his mouth, and cursed his day. And Job spake, and
said.

BE SO , ". After this Job opened his mouth — The days of mourning being now
over, and no hopes appearing of Job’s amendment, but his afflictions rather
increasing, he bursts into a severe lamentation; he wishes he had never existed, or
that his death had immediately followed his birth; life under such a load of calamity
appearing to him the greatest affliction. Undoubtedly Satan, who had been
permitted to bring the fore-mentioned calamities upon him, and to torment his body
so dreadfully, had also obtained liberty to assault his mind with various and
powerful temptations. This he now does with the utmost violence, injecting hard
thoughts of God, as being severe, unjust, and his enemy; that he might shake his
confidence and hope, and produce that horror and dismay, which might issue in his
cursing God. For, as is justly observed by Mr. Scott, unless we bring these inward
trials into the account, during which we may conclude that he was deprived of all
comfortable sense of God’s favour, and filled with a dread of his wrath, we shall not
readily apprehend the reason of the change that took place in his conduct, from the
entire resignation manifested in the preceding chapters, to the impatience which
appears here, and in some of the subsequent parts of this book. But this
consideration solves the difficulty: the inward conflict and anguish of his mind,
added to all his outward sufferings, caused the remaining corruption of his nature
to work so powerfully, that at length it burst forth in many improper expressions.
And cursed his day — His birth-day, as is evident from Job 3:3. In vain do some
endeavour to excuse this and the following speeches of Job, who afterward is
reproved by God, and severely accuses himself for them, Job 38:2; Job 40:4; Job
42:3; Job 42:6. And yet he does not proceed so far as to curse God, and therefore
makes the devil a liar: but although he does not break forth into direct reproaches
of God, yet he makes indirect reflections upon his providence. His curse was sinful,
both because it was vain, being applied to what was not capable of receiving blessing
or cursing, and because it reflected blame on God for bringing that day into
existence, and for giving him life on that day. Some other pious persons, through a
similar infirmity, when immersed in deep troubles, have vented their grief in the
same unjustifiable way. See Jeremiah 20:14.
COFFMA , "Here we come to the long middle section of Job, which is
characterized by a number of speeches by Job and his friends. These speeches are
not mere conversation, but essay-like statements of the sentiments, theological
convictions, philosophies and exhortations of the speakers.
"Job speaks nine times in this section, Eliphaz and Bildad three times each, Zophar
twice, Elihu once, and God once, his declaration ending the colloquy."[1]
Job broke the silence which marked the first period of his friend's visit; and his
bitter cursing of the day he was born is a feature of this first chapter.
"Cursing one's natal day is not a very wise act, since it could not have any effect
whatever; but even so great a prophet as Jeremiah did the same thing (Jeremiah

20:14-18). All that this chapter really means is that Job, in the depths of his misery,
wishes that he had never been born, or that he had died in infancy."[2]
Watson entitled this chapter, "The Cry From the Depth."[3]
Job 3:1-2
"After this, Job opened his mouth and cursed his day. And Job answered and said:"
Writers have understood this to mean "after the seven days and nights of silence,"
but the text does not say that. "In the Ugaritic texts, `after this' introduces the
transition to a new episode."[4] Here we have the beginning of the second section of
Job.
COKE, "Job 3:1. After this opened Job his mouth— The days of mourning being
now over, and no hopes appearing of Job's amendment, but his afflictions rather
increasing, he bursts into a severe lamentation, and wishes that he had never
existed, or that his death had immediately followed his birth; life, under such a load
of calamity, appearing to him the greatest possible affliction. It may be proper just
to remark, that the metrical part of the book begins at the third verse of this
chapter.
ELLICOTT, "(1) After this opened Job his mouth.—There is a striking similarity
between this chapter and Jeremiah 20:14-18, so much so that one must be borrowed
from the other; the question is, which is the original? Is Jeremiah the germ of this?
or is this the tree from which a branch has been hewn by Jeremiah? Our own
conviction is that Job is the original, inasmuch as this chapter is indispensable to the
development of the poem; but in Jeremiah the passage occurs casually as the record
of a passing mood of despair. It is, moreover, apparently clear that Jeremiah is
quoting Job as he might quote one of the Psalms or any other writing with which he
was familiar. He was applying to daily life the well-known expression of a
patriarchal experience, whereas in the other case the words of Job would be the
ideal magnifying of a commonplace and realistic experience.
EBC, "THE CRY FROM THE DEPTH
Job 3:1-26
Job SPEAKS
WHILE the friends of Job sat beside him that dreary week of silence, each of them
was meditating in his own way the sudden calamities which had brought the
prosperous emeer to poverty, the strong man to this extremity of miserable disease.
Many thoughts came and were dismissed; but always the question returned, Why
these disasters, this shadow of dreadful death? And for very compassion and sorrow

each kept secret the answer that came and came again and would not be rejected.
Meanwhile the silence has weighed upon the sufferer, and the burden of it becomes
at length insupportable. He has tried to read their thoughts, to assure himself that
grief alone kept them dumb, that when they spoke it would be to cheer him with
kindly words, to praise and reinvigorate his faith, to tell him of Divine help that
would not fail him in life or death. But as he sees their faces darken into inquiry
first and then into suspicion, and reads at length in averted looks the thought they
cannot conceal, when he comprehends that the men he loved and trusted hold him
to be a transgressor and under the ban of God, this final disaster of false judgment
is overwhelming. The man whom all circumstances appear to condemn, who is
bankrupt, solitary, outworn with anxiety and futile efforts to prove his honour, if he
have but one to believe in him, is helped to endure and hope. But Job finds human
friendship yield like a reed. All the past is swallowed up in one tragical thought that,
be a man what he may, there is no refuge for him in the justice of man: Everything
is gone that made human society and existence in the world worth caring for. His
wife, indeed, believes in his integrity, but values it so little that she would have him
cast it away with a taunt against God. His friends, it is plain to see, deny it. He is
suffering at God’s hand, and they are hardened against him. The iron enters into his
soul.
True, it is the shame and torment of his disease that move him to utter his bitter
lamentation. Yet the underlying cause of his loss of self-command and of patient
confidence in God must not be missed. The disease has made life a physical agony;
but he could bear that if still no cloud came between him and the face of God. ow
these dark, suspicious looks which meet him every time he lifts his eyes, which he
feels resting upon him even when he bows his head in the attempt to pray, make
religion seem a mockery. And in pitiful anticipation of the doom to which they are
silently driving him, he cries aloud against the life that remains. He has lived in
vain. Would he had never been born!
In this first lyrical speech put into the mouth of Job there is an Oriental,
hyperbolical strain, suited to the speaker and his circumstances. But we are also
made to feel that calamity and dejection have gone near to unhinging his mind. He is
not mad, but his language is vehement, almost that of insanity. It would be wrong,
therefore, to criticise the words in a matter-of-fact way, and against the spirit of the
book to try by the rules of Christian resignation one so tossed and racked, in the
very throat of the furnace. This is a pious man, a patient man, who lately said,
"Shall we receive joy at the hand of God, and shall we not receive affliction?" He
seems to have lost all control of himself and plunges into wild untamed speech filled
with anathemas, as one who had never feared God. But he is driven from self-
possession. Phantasmal now is all that brave life of his as prince and as father, as a
man in honour beloved of the Highest. Did he ever enjoy it? If he did, was it not as
in a dream? Was he not rather a deceiver, a vile transgressor? His state befits that.
Light and love and life are turned into bitter gall. "I lived," says one distressed like
Job, "in a continual, indefinite, pining fear; tremulous, pusillanimous, apprehensive
of I knew not what; it seemed as if the heavens and the earth were but boundless
jaws of a devouring monster wherein I, palpitating, waited to be devoured ‘Man is,

properly speaking, based upon hope, he has no other possession but hope; this
world of his is emphatically the Place of Hope."’ We see Job, "for the present, quite
shut out from hope; looking not into the golden orient, but vaguely all round into a
dim firmament pregnant with earthquake and tornado."
The poem may be read calmly. Let us remember that it came not calmly from the
pen of the writer, but as the outburst of volcanic feeling from the deep centres of
life. It is Job we hear; the language befits his despondency, his position in the
drama. But surely it presents to us a real experience of one who, in the hour of
Israel’s defeat and captivity, had seen his home swept bare, wife and children seized
and tortured or borne down in the rush of savage soldiery, while he himself lived on,
reduced in one day to awful memories and doubts as the sole consciousness of life. Is
not some crisis like this with its irretrievable woes translated for us here into the
language of Job’s bitter cry? Are we not made witnesses of a tragedy greater even
than his?
"What is to become of us," asks Amiel, "when everything leaves us, health, joy,
affections, when the sun seems to have lost its warmth, and life is stripped of all
charm? Must we either harden or forget? There is but one answer, Keep close to
duty, do what you ought, come what may." The mood of these words is not so
devout as other passages of the same writer. The advice, however, is often tendered
in the name of religion to the life weary and desolate; and there are circumstances to
which it well applies. But a distracting sense of impotence weighed down the life of
Job. Duty? He could do nothing. It was impossible to find relief in work; hence the
fierceness of his words. or can we fail to hear in them a strain of impatience,
almost of anger: "To the unregenerate Prometheus Vinctus of a man, it is ever the
bitterest aggravation of his wretchedness that he is conscious of virtue, that he feels
himself the victim not of suffering only, but of injustice. What then? Is the heroic
inspiration we name Virtue but some passion, some bubble of the blood? Thus has
the bewildered wanderer to stand, as so many have done, shouting question after
question into the sibyl cave of Destiny, and receiving no answer but an echo. It is all
a grim desert, this once fair world of his."
Job is already asserting to himself the reality of his own virtue, for he resents the
suspicion of it. Indeed, with all the mystery of his affliction yet to solve, he can but
think that Providence is also casting doubt on him. A keen sense of the favour of
God had been his. ow he becomes aware that while he is still the same man who
moved about in gladness and power, his life has a different look to others; men and
nature conspire against him. His once brave faith-the Lord gave, the Lord hath
taken away-is almost overborne. He does not renounce, but he has a struggle to save
it. The subtle Divine grace at his heart alone keeps him from bidding farewell to
God.
The outburst of Job’s speech falls into three lyrical strophes, the first ending at the
tenth verse, the second at the nineteenth, the third closing with the chapter.
I.

"Job opened his mouth and cursed his day." In a kind of wild impossible revision of
providence and reopening of questions long settled, he assumes the right of heaping
denunciations on the day of his birth. He is so fallen, so distraught, and the end of
his existence appears to have come in such profound disaster, the face of God as well
as of man frowning on him, that he turns savagely on the only fact left to strike at, -
his birth into the world. But the whole strain is imaginative. His revolt is unreason,
not impiety either against God or his parents. He does not lose the instinct of a good
man, one who keeps in mind the love of father and mother and the intention of the
Almighty whom he still reveres. Life is an act of God: he would not have it marred
again by infelicity like his own. So the day as an ideal factor in history or cause of
existence is given up to chaos.
"That day, there!
Darkness be it.
Seek it not the High God from above;
And no light stream on it.
Darkness and the nether gloom reclaim it,
Encamp over it the clouds;
Scare it blacknesses of the day."
The idea is, Let the day of my birth be got rid of, so that no other come into being on
such a day; let God pass from it-then He will not give life on that day. Mingled in
this is the old world notion of days having meanings and powers of their own. This
day had proved malign, terribly bad. It was already a chaotic day, not fit for a
man’s birth. Let every natural power of storm and eclipse draw it back to the void.
The night too, as part of the day, comes under imprecation.
That night, there!
Darkness seize it,
Joy have it none among the days of the year,
or come into the numbering of months.
See! That night, be it barren;
o song-voice come to it:
Ban it, the cursers of day

Skilful to stir up leviathan.
Dark be the stars of its twilight,
May it long for the light-find none,
or see the eyelids of dawn.
The vividness here is from superstition, fancies of past generations, old dreams of a
child race. Foreign they would be to the mind of Job in his strength; but in great
disaster the thoughts are apt to fall back on these levels of ignorance and dim efforts
to explain, omens and powers intangible. It is quite easy to follow Job in this relapse,
half wilful, half for easing of his bosom. Throughout Arabia, Chaldaea, and India
went a belief in evil powers that might be invoked to make a particular day one of
misfortune. The leviathan is the dragon which was thought to cause eclipses by
twining its black coils about the sun and moon. These vague undertones of belief ran
back probably to myths of the sky and the storm, and Job ordinarily must have
scorned them. ow, for the time, he chooses to make them serve his need of stormy
utterance. If any who hear him really believe in magicians and their spells, they are
welcome to gather through that belief a sense of his condition; or if they choose to
feel pious horror, they may be shocked. He flings out maledictions, knowing in his
heart that they are vain words.
Is it not something strange that the happy past is here entirely forgotten? Why has
Job nothing to say of the days that shone brightly upon him? Have they no weight in
the balance against pain and grief?
"The tempest in my mind
Doth from my senses take all feeling else
Save what beats there."
His mind is certainly clouded; for it is not vain to say that piety preserves the
thought of what God once gave, and Job had himself spoken of it when his disease
was young. At this point he is an example of what man is-when he allows the water
floods to overflow him and the sad present to extinguish a brighter past. The sense
of a wasted life is upon him, because he does not yet understand what the saving of
life is. To be kind to others and to be happy in one’s own kindness is not for man so
great a benefit, so high a use of life, as to suffer with others and for them. What
were the life of our Lord on earth and His death but a revelation to man of the
secret he had never grasped and still but half approves? The Book of Job, a long,
yearning cry out of the night, shows how the world needed Christ to shed His Divine
light upon all our experiences and unite them in a religion of sacrifice and triumph.
The book moves toward that reconciliation which only the Christ can achieve. As
yet, looking at the sufferer here, we see that the light of the future has not dawned

upon him. Only when he is brought to bay by the falsehoods of man, in the absolute
need of his soul, will he boldly anticipate the redemption and fling himself for refuge
on a justifying God.
II.
In the second strophe cursing is exchanged for wailing, fruitless reproach of a long
past day for a touching chant in praise of the grave. If his birth had to be, why could
he not have passed at once into the shades? The lament, though not so passionate, is
full of tragic emotion. The phrases of it have been woven into a modern hymn and
used to express what Christians may feel; but they are pagan in tone, and meant by
the writer to embody the unhopeful thought of the race. Here is no outlook beyond
the inanition of death, the oblivion and silence of the tomb. It is not the extreme of
unfaith, but rather of weakness and misery.
Wherefore hastened the knees to meet me,
And why the breasts that I should suck?
For then, having sunk down, would I repose,
Fallen asleep there would be rest for me.
With kings and councillors of the earth
Who built them solitary piles;
Or with princes who had gold,
Who filled their houses with silver;
Or as a hidden abortion I had not been,
As infants who never saw light.
There the wicked cease from raging,
And there the outworn rest.
Together the prisoners are at ease,
ot hearing the call of the taskmaster.
Small and great are there the same,
The slave set free from his lord.

It is beautiful poetry, and the images have a singular charm for the dejected mind.
The chief point, however, for us to notice is the absence of any thought of judgment.
In the dim underworld, hid as beneath heavy clouds, power and energy are not.
Existence has fallen to so low an ebb that it scarcely matters whether men were good
or bad in this life, nor is it needful to separate them. For the tyrant can do no more
harm to the captive, nor the robber to his victim. The astute councillor is no better
than the slave. It is a kind of existence below the level of moral judgment, below the
level either of fear or joy. From the peacefulness of this region none are excluded; as
there will be no strength to do good there will be none to do evil. "The small and
great are there the same." The stillness and calm of the dead body deceive the mind,
willing in its wretchedness to be deceived.
When the writer put this chant into the mouth of Job, he had in memory the
pyramids of Egypt and tombs, like those of Petra, carved in the lonely hills. The
contrast is thus made picturesque between the state of Job lying in loathsome
disease and the lot of those who are gathered to the mighty dead. For whether the
rich are buried in their stately sepulchres, or the body of a slave is hastily covered
with desert sand, all enter into one painless repose. The whole purpose of the
passage is to mark the extremity of hopelessness, the mind revelling in images of its
own decay. We are not meant to rest in that love of death from which Job vainly
seeks comfort. On the contrary, we are to see him by and by roused to interest in life
and its issues. This is no halting place in the poem, as it often is in human thought.
A great problem of Divine righteousness hangs unsolved. With the death of the
prisoner and the down-trodden slave whose worn out body is left a prey to the
vulture-with the death of the tyrant whose evil pride has built a stately tomb for his
remains-all is not ended. Peace has not come. Rather has the unravelling of the
tangle to begin. The All-righteous has to make His inquisition and deal out the
justice of eternity. Modern poetry, however, often repeats in its own way the old-
world dream, mistaking the silence and composure of the dead face for a spiritual
deliverance:-
"The aching craze to live ends, and life glides
Lifeless-to nameless quiet, nameless joy.
Blessed irvana, sinless, stirless rest,
That change which never changes."
To Christianity this idea is utterly foreign, yet it mingles with some religious
teaching, and is often to be found in the weaker sorts of religious fiction and verse.
III.
The last portion of Job’s address begins with a note of inquiry. He strikes into eager
questioning of heaven and earth regarding his state. What is he kept alive for? He

pursues death with his longing as one goes into the mountains to seek treasure. And
again, his way is hid; he has no future. God hath hedged him in on this side by
losses, on that by grief; behind a past mocks him, before is a shape which he follows
and yet dreads.
"Wherefore gives He light to wretched men,
Life to the bitter in soul?
Who long for death; but no!
Search for it more than for treasures."
It is indeed a horrible condition, this of the baffled mind to which nothing remains
but its own gnawing thought that finds neither reason of being nor end of turmoil,
that can neither cease to question nor find answer to inquiries that rack the spirit.
There is energy enough, life enough to feel life a terror, and no more; not enough for
any mastery even of stoical resolve. The power of self-consciousness seems to be the
last injury, a essus-shirt, the gift of a strange hate. "The real agony is the silence,
the ignorance of the why and the wherefore, the Sphinx-like imperturbability which
meets his prayers." This struggle for a light that will not come has been expressed
by Matthew Arnold in his "Empedocles on Etna," a poem which may in some
respects be named a modern version of Job:-
This heart will glow no more; thou art
A living man no more, Empedocles!
othing but a devouring flame of thought-
But a naked eternally restless mind
To the elements it came from
Everything will return-
Our bodies to earth,
Our blood to water,
Heat to fire,
Breath to air.
They were well born,
They will be well entombed-

But mind, but thought-
Where will they find their parent element
What will receive them, who will call them home?
But we shall still be in them and they in us
And we shall be unsatisfied as now;
And we shall feel the agony of thirst,
The ineffable longing for the life of life,
Baffled forever.
Thought yields no result; the outer universe is dumb and impenetrable. Still Job
would revive if a battle for righteousness offered itself to him. He has never had to
fight for God or for his own faith. When the trumpet call is heard he will respond;
but he is not yet aware of hearing it.
The closing verses have presented considerable difficulty to interpreters, who on the
one hand shrink from the supposition that Job is going back on his past life of
prosperity and finding there the origin of his fear, and on the other hand see the
danger of leaving so significant a passage without definite meaning. The Revised
Version puts all the verbs of the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth verses into the
present tense, and Dr. A.B. Davidson thinks translation into the past tense would
give a meaning "contrary to the idea of the poem." ow, a considerable interval had
already elapsed from the time of Job’s calamities, even from the beginning of his
illness, quite long enough to allow the growth of anxiety and fear as to the judgment
of the world. Job was not ignorant of the caprice and hardness of men. He knew
how calamity was interpreted; he knew that many who once bowed to his greatness
already heaped scorn upon his fall. May not his fear have been that his friends from
beyond the desert would furnish the last and in some respects most cutting of his
sorrows?
"I have feared a fear; it has come upon me,
And that which I dread has come to me.
I have not been at ease nor quiet, nor have I had rest;
Yet trouble has come."
In his brooding soul, those seven days and nights, fear has deepened into certainty.
He is a man despised. Even for those three his circumstances have proved too much.

Did he imagine for a moment that their coming might relieve the pressure of his lot
and open a way to the recovery of his place among men? The trouble is deeper than
ever; they have stirred a tempest in his breast.
ote that in his whole agony Job makes no motion towards suicide. Arnold’s
Empedocles cries against life, flings out his questions to a dumb universe, and then
plunges into the crater of Etna. Here, as at other points, the inspiration of the
author of our book strikes clear between stoicism and pessimism, defiance of the
world to do its worst and confession that the struggle is too terrible. The deep sense
of all that is tragic in life, and, with this, the firm persuasion that nothing is
appointed to man but what he is able to bear, together make the clear Bible note. It
may seem that Job’s ejaculations differ little from the cry out of the "City of
Dreadful ight,"
"Weary of erring in this desert, Life,
Weary of hoping hopes forever vain,
Weary of struggling in all sterile strife,
Weary of thought which maketh nothing plain,
I close my eyes and calm my panting breath
And pray to thee, O ever quiet Death,
To come and soothe away my bitter pain."
But the writer of the book knows what is in hand. He has to show how far faith may
be pressed down and bent by the sore burdens of life without breaking. He has to
give us the sense of a soul in the uttermost depth, that we may understand the
sublime argument which follows, know its importance, and find our own tragedy
exhibited, our own need met, the personal and the universal marching together to
an issue. Suicide is no issue for a life, any more than universal cataclysm for the
evolution of a world. Despair is no refuge. The inspired writer here sees so far, so
clearly, that to mention suicide would be absurd. The struggle of life cannot be
renounced. So much he knows by a spiritual instinct which anticipates the wisdom
of later times. Were this book a simple record of fact, we have Job in a position far
more trying than that of Saul after his defeat on Gilboa; but it is an ideal prophetic
writing, a Divine poem, and the faith it is designed to commend saves the man from
interfering by any deed of his with the will of God.
We are prepared for the vehement controversy that follows and the sustained
appeal of the sufferer to that Power which has laid upon him such a weight of
agony. When he breaks into passionate cries and seems to be falling away from all
trust, we do not despair of him nor of the cause he represents. The intensity with
which he longs for death is actually a sign and measure of the strong life that throbs

within him, which yet will be led out into light and freedom and come to peace as it
were in the very clash of revolt.
PARKER, "The Trial of Job
Job 3
Job has made two speeches up to this point Both of them admirable—more than
admirable, touching a point to which imagination can hardly ascend in its moral
sublimity:—
"Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the
ground, and worshipped, and said, aked came I out of my mother"s womb, and
naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away; blessed
be the name of the Lord" ( Job 1:20, Job 1:21.)
Mark in how short a space the sacred name is mentioned three times. The second
speech is equal in religiousness to the first:—
"Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? shall we receive good
at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?" ( Job 2:10.)
Again the divine name is invoked, and set in its right place, at the very centre of
things, upon the very throne of the universe. Job"s first speech was so full of noble
submission, and so truly religious and spiritually expressive, that it has become a
watchword in the bitterest Christian experience. Who has not said, "The Lord gave,
and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord"? Sometimes there
has been hesitation as to the close of the sentence; the voice has not been equally
steady throughout the whole enunciation: the sufferer has been able to say, "The
Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away,"—then came a mark of punctuation not
found in the books, not known to writers and scholars—a great heart-stave; and
after that the words were added with some tremulousness—"blessed be the name of
the Lord." But it is not easy talk. Do not let us imagine that passages like this can be
quoted glibly, flippantly, thrown back in easy retort when grief has come and
darkened the house and turned the life into a cloud. Words so noble can only be
uttered by the heart in its most sacred moments, and then can hardly be uttered in
trumpet tone, but in a stifled voice; yet, notwithstanding the stifling and the
sobbing, there is a strong tone that goes right through all the bitterness and the woe,
and magnifies God. Where have we found these words? We have found them on our
tombstones. Walk up and down the cemetery, and read the dreary literature which
is often to be found there, and you will in many instances come upon the words of
Job , "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the
Lord." It has helped many to bear the loss of children: is there any greater grief in
all the resources of woe? This passage has wrought miracles in face of the empty cot.
Strong men have been able to write even upon the tombstones of little
children—"The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away." Hardly like the Lord

when he so took away. He might have taken away all the flock, and ripped up all the
trees in one black night, and the passage could have been quoted with somewhat of
exultation; the loss would have been as nothing; so long as the children were about
the mourner they would make him forget his loss. What but the grace of God, the
Father of the universe, could make a man bear the silence which follows the loss of
children? The miracle has been wrought, and the bearing of that silence has not
been a stoical answer to a great distress, but an answer full of intelligence—
intelligence growing up into consent, and consent that has sometimes said in
moments of rapture, "I would not have it otherwise." These are the eternal miracles
of grace.
Reckoning the first and second speeches as one deliverance, we now come to another
view of Job"s case. Job"s tongue is loosened, and his words are many. How did he
come to speak so much? Because his friends had gathered around him, and after
seven days and seven nights of silence, "Job opened his mouth, and cursed his day."
What a secret masonry is this of friendship and sympathy. Job would have taken his
grief downward, as it were, swallowed it, digested it, and turned it mayhap into
some degree of spiritual strength; but the sight of friendship, the touch of sympathy,
brought it out of him—evoked, elicited it; and what other form of speech was so true
to his inmost feeling as the form which is known as malediction? Do not read the
words as a grammarian would read them. Do not parse this grammar! the speech is
but one sentence, and it rushes from a soul that is momentarily out of equipoise.
Our friends often draw out of us the very worst that is in us. It is one of two things
under the mysterious touch of fellowship and sympathy: either we surprise our
friends by the dignity and volume of our prayer, or we amaze them by our power of
deprecation and malediction. But the Lord"s recording angel never sets down the
words as terms that are to be grammatically examined, critically scrutinised, as if
we had gathered ourselves up for a supreme literary composition, and were
prepared to be judged finally by its merits as a literary structure. We best comment
upon such words by repeating them,—by studying the probable tone in which they
were uttered. We read them best when we read them through our tears. They do us
good when we forget the letters but feel all the magic of the grief. Let no wanton
man trample upon this sacred ground: no lion should be here, nor any ravenous
beast go up hereon; it should not be found here; but the redeemed of the Lord
should read this chapter, and they should annotate it with their own experience, and
say, Thank God for this Prayer of Manasseh , who in prose-poetry has uttered every
thought appropriate to grief, and has given anguish a new costume of expression. To
the end of time the wobegone will come to this chapter to find the words which they
could never themselves have invented.
otice how terrible after all is satanic power. Look at Job if you would see how
much the devil can under divine permission do to human life: the thief has taken
away all the property; the assassin has struck blows of death at unoffending men
and women; the malign spirit: whose name is Cruelty has carried the trouble from
the body into the soul. When the Lord said, "but save his life," he seemed almost to
add a drop to the agony rather than assuage the pain. Within a limited sphere, it
would seem as if it had been more merciful to say, "Kill him, outright, at one blow;

do not prolong the agony; smite him with a blow which means death." The words
read, "but save his life,"—save his power of feeling, save his sensibility, save that
peculiar nerve which feels everything, and which becomes either the medium of
ecstacy or of agony. But we must not judge the words within limits which our
invention could assign; we must wait the issue to know God"s meaning in sparing a
life out of which the life was taken. Oh! what an irony, what a contradiction in
terms—a lifeless life, a life all death! Yet even into the meaning of that mystery some
souls can come today. Look at the picture, and as you look at it write underneath,
This is what the enemy would do in every case. If there is any other picture in
human life, do not credit that picture to the devil; if there is a happy little child
anywhere, do not say, This is the devil"s work; if today in all life"s black misery
there is a man who is momentarily glad, call that gladness a miracle of God: we owe
nothing of beauty, music, love, trust, progress to the enemy; every smile is a
sunbeam from above; every throb of gladness is communicated from the life of God.
Perhaps it was well that in one instance at least we should see the devil at his worst.
Such historical instances are needed now and again in any profound and complete
perusal of human life. There must be no play-work here. The devil must show what
he would, do in every case by what he has done in one. "Resist the devil, and he will
flee from you." There be those who ask whether there is any personal devil: why ask
such a question? We have already answered that the devilishness, which is obvious,
makes the existence of the devil more than a presumption: if there were no
devilishness, there would be no devil. Let his work certify his existence.
What miracles may be wrought in human experience! The word "miracles" is not
misapplied when we study Job"s bitter malediction upon the day of his birth. See
how existence is felt to be a burden. Existence was never meant to be a heavy weight.
Existence is an idea distinctively God"s. "To be"—who could have thought of that
but the "I AM"? Existence was meant to be a joy, a hope, a rehearsal of music and
service of a quality and range now inconceivable; every nerve was made to tingle
with pleasure; every faculty was constructed to bring back to its owner harvests
from the field of the universe. But under satanic agency even existence is felt to be
an intolerable burden—to be, is to be in hell. "To be"—the verb of every speech,
and without which speech is impossible, is a conjugation of agony. Go through all
the moods of this infinite verb, and it is like going through the gamut of grief. Even
this miracle can be wrought by Satan. He can turn our every faculty into a heavy
calamity. He can so play upon our nerves as to make us feel that feeling is
intolerable. Then in the case of Job all the blessed past was forgotten. ot a word is
said about the good time he has already enjoyed; there is nothing here of spiritual
remembrance: there is no reference to the time when "his substance also was seven
thousand sheep, and three thousand camels, and five hundred yoke of oxen, and five
hundred she asses, and a very great household; so that this man was the greatest of
all the men of the east" ( Job 1:3). It is easy to forget sunshine. It is no miracle on
our part that we obliterate the past in the presence of an immediate woe. We are
accustomed to this obliteration. Our hand, with infernal skill, rubs out the record of
yesterday"s redemption. To this pass would the devil drive us! We should have no
memory of light, music, morning, joy, festival: the past would be one great black
cold cloud, without a hint of summer through which the soul has passed. Then

again, in the case of Job , the spirit of worship was driven out by the spirit of
atheism. There is no God in this malediction. Only once is the divine name invoked,
and then it is invoked for no spiritual purpose. Yet the same man made all the three
speeches. The man who said, "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away:
blessed be the name of the Lord"; "Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and
shall we not receive evil?" uttered the whole of this back monologue. There is but a
step between the soul and atheism. We have but to turn round from the altar to face
a prayerless state and to forget the living God. "Let him that thinketh he standeth
take heed lest he fall." What is there so easily shaken off as religious usage, spiritual
habit, and all that constitutes an outward and public relation to the altar of heaven?
But the speech of Job is full of profound mistakes, and the mistakes are only
excusable because they were perpetrated by an unbalanced mind. The eloquent
tirade proceeds upon the greatest misapprehensions. Yet we must be merciful in our
judgment, for we ourselves have been unbalanced, and we have not spared the
eloquence of folly in the time of loss, bereavement, and great suffering. We may not
have made the same speech in one set deliverance, going through it paragraph by
paragraph, but if we could gather up all reproaches, murmurings, complainings,
which we have uttered, and set them down in order, Job"s short chapter would be
but a preface to the black volume indited by our atheistic hearts. Job makes the
mistake that personal happiness is the test of Providence. Job did not take the larger
view. What a different speech he might have made! He might have said, Though I
am in these circumstances now, I was not always in them: weeping endureth for a
night, joy cometh in the morning: I will not complain of one bitter winter day when
I remember all the summer season in which I have sunned myself at the very gate of
heaven. Yet he might not have said this; for it lies not within the scope of human
strength. We must not expect more even from Christian men than human nature in
its best moods can exemplify. They are mocked when they complain, they are
taunted when they say their souls are in distress; there are those who stand up and
say, Where is now thy God? But "the best of men," as one has quaintly said, "are
but men at the best." God himself knoweth our frame, he remembereth that we are
dust; he says, They are a wind which cometh for a little time, and then passeth
away; their life is like a vapour, curling up into the blue air for one little moment,
and then dying off as to visibleness as if it had never been. The Lord knoweth our
days, our faculties, our sensibilities, our capacity of suffering, and the judgment
must be with him. Then Job committed the mistake of supposing that circumstances
are of more consequence than life. If the sun had shone, if the fields and vineyards
had returned plentifully, answering the labour of the sower and the planter with
great abundance, who knows whether the soul had not gone down in the same equal
proportion? It is a hard thing to keep both soul and body at an equal measure.
"How hardly"—with what straining—"shall they that have riches enter into the
kingdom of God." Who knows what Job might have said if the prosperity had been
multiplied sevenfold? "Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked." Where is the man who
could bear always to swelter under the sun-warmth of prosperity? Where is the man
that does not need now and again to be smitten, chastened, almost lacerated, cut in
two by God"s whip, lest he forget to pray? "My brethren, count it all joy when ye
fall into divers temptations." "Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth

every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with
sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without
chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then ye are bastards, and not sons." Let
suffering be accounted a seal of sonship, if it come as a test rather than as a penalty.
Where a man has justly deserved the suffering, let him not comfort himself with its
highest religious meaning, but let him accept it as a just penalty; but where it has
overtaken him at the very altar, where it has cut him down when he was on his way
to heaven with pure heart and pure lips, then let him say, This is the Lord"s doing,
and he means to enlarge my manhood, to increase the volume of my being, and to
develop his own image and likeness according to the mysteriousness of his own way:
blessed be the name of the Lord! But what a temptation there is to find our religion
in our circumstances! Who can realise the profound truth that to live is better than
to have? We are prone to say that not to have is not to live. What a mystery is life!
Men cling to it oftentimes in the extremest pain. Sometimes, indeed, just when the
agony is at its most burning heat, they may say, Oh that I could die! but all human
history shows that men would rather put up with much misery than give up life.
There is a mystery in life; there is a divine element in being, in existing, in having
certain faculties and powers. This is the way of the Lord!
Why has Job fallen into this strain? He has omitted the word which made his first
speech noble. We have pointed out that in the first speech the word "Lord" occurs
three times, and the word Lord never occurs in this speech for purely religious
purposes; he would only have God invoked that God might carry out his own feeble
prayer for destruction and annihilation; the word "God" is only associated with
complaint and murmuring, as, for example, "Let that day be darkness; let not God
regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it" ( Job 3:4); and
again—"Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged
in?" ( Job 3:23). This is not the "Lord" of the first speech; this is but invoking
Omnipotence to do a puny miracle: it is not making the Lord a high tower, and an
everlasting refuge into which the soul can pass, and where it can for ever be at ease.
So we may retain the name of God, and yet have no Lord—living, merciful, and
mighty, to whom our souls can flee as to a refuge. It is not enough to use the term
God; we must enter into the spirit of its meaning, and find in God not almightiness
only but all-mercifulness, all-goodness, all-wisdom. "God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble." Yet we must not be hard upon Job , for there have
been times in which the best of us has had no heaven, no altar, no Bible, no God. If
those times had endured a little longer, our souls had been overwhelmed; but there
came a voice from the excellent glory, saying, "For a small moment have I forsaken
thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee." Praised for ever be the name of the
delivering God!
ote
Cursing the Day.—The translation of this passage is wrong, so far as the second
clause is concerned, though the margin of our Bibles gives the word "leviathan"
instead of "mourning." Rendered literally the text would run—"Let the curse of the
day curse it—they who are skilled to raise up leviathan." Leviathan is the dragon,

an astro-mythological being, which has its place in the heavens. Whether it be the
constellation still known by the name "draco," or dragon, or whether it be serpens,
or hydra, constellations lying farther south, it is not possible to decide. But the
dragon, in ancient popular opinion, had the power to follow the sun and moon, to
enfold, or even to swallow them, and thus cause night. Eastern magicians pretended
to possess the power of rousing up the dragon to make war upon the sun and moon.
Whenever they wished for darkness they had but to curse the day, and hound on the
dragon to extinguish for a time the lamp that enlightened the world. Job , in his
bitterness, curses the day of his birth, and utters the wish that those who control
leviathan would, or could, blot that day and its deeds from the page of history.—
Biblical Things not Generally Known.
GUZIK, "A. Wishes he had never been born.
1. (Job 3:1-2) Job will curse his birth day, but not his God.
After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. And Job spoke, and
said:
a. After this: This was after all the catastrophe, all the personal affliction, and all
the demonstration of compassion from Job’s friends. ow Job will begin to speak
about his situation.
b. Cursed the day of his birth: Satan was confident that he could push Job to curse
God (Job 1:11 and Job 2:5). As Job spoke in his deep distress, he cursed the day of
his birth – but he did not even come close to cursing God.
i. Job’s thinking was somewhat common among the ancients. The historian
Herodotus described an ancient people who mourned new births (for the suffering
that the new life would endure) and rejoiced in deaths (as a final release from the
suffering of life).
ii. This chapter begins the battle in Job’s mind and soul. He will not lose more or
suffer more than he already has (though his physical pain will continue). Yet now
we can say that the battle enters into an entirely other arena; the arena of Job’s
mind and soul. How will he choose to think about his suffering? How will he choose
to think about what others think about his suffering? How will he choose to think
about God in all this? These are the questions that take up the remainder of the
book, and soon come to any sufferer. The catastrophic loss itself is only an entry
point into the agonizing battle in the mind and soul.
SIMEO , "JOB CURSES THE DAY OF HIS BIRTH
Job 3:1. After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day.
IT is Worthy of observation, that the most eminent saints mentioned in the sacred

records are reported, not only to have sinned, but to have failed in those very graces
for which they were most distinguished. Abraham, the father of the faithful, who is
set forth as the great pattern for all future believers, repeatedly denied his wife
through the influence of unbelief: and Moses, the meekest of all men upon the face
of the earth, spake unadvisedly with his lips, and thereby provoked God to exclude
him from the earthly Canaan. Of the patience of Job the Scripture speaks in the
highest terms: but, behold, he is here set forth to our view in a state of grievous
impatience. Let us consider,
I. The manner in which he expressed his impatience—
It should seem as if Satan had now assaulted, not his body only, but his soul also,
and had succeeded in wounding him with his fiery darts. It is probable too, that the
continued silence of his friends had produced an unfavourable impression on his
mind. But however these things might be,
He vented his complaints in very unbecoming terms—
[He first cursed the day of his birth, wishing it to be marked, both by God in his
providence, and by men in their feelings, as a day of darkness and gloominess, even
to the latest generations [ ote: ver. 3–10.]. He next expressed his regret, that he had
not been left to perish as soon as he came out of the womb; seeing that he should
then have escaped all his calamities, and been quiet in the tomb, where all of every
class, whatever their situations and circumstances were whilst they were living upon
earth, are enjoying equal repose [ ote: ver. 11–19.]. And, lastly, he complained that
whilst his grievous sufferings tormented him beyond measure, they did not prevail
to take away his life [ ote: ver. 20–26.].
We have a similar instance of impatience in another eminent saint, the Prophet
Jeremiah, who seems almost to have adopted the very expressions in the chapter
before us [ ote: Jeremiah 20:14-18.].
Alas! how weak a creature is man when left in any measure to himself!]
But is this an uncommon line of conduct?
[ o, truly: there is the same spirit in every man, ready to break forth whenever
occasion offers: and in too many of us it breaks forth almost without any occasion at
all. How little a thing will discompose the minds of the generality! — — —
How small a provocation will cause them to vent their displeasure in angry and
opprobrious language! — — — If trials be at all heavy and of long continuance,
how will they disquiet our minds, and destroy all the comfort of our lives! Is it an
uncommon thing for men under some calamity to feel weary of their existence, and
even to entertain thoughts of terminating their sorrows by suicide? Yea, do not
multitudes, who have not one half of Job’s trials, actually destroy their own lives,
and rush headlong into hell itself, in order to get rid of their present troubles?

Whilst then we lament the imperfections of this holy man, let us turn our eyes
inwards, and contemplate the prevalence of our own corruptions, which a single
loss, or disappointment, or injury, is sufficient to call forth in their utmost extent.]
Having viewed the impatience of Job, let us notice,
II. Some observations arising from it—
We may justly notice,
1. The folly of arraigning the providence of God—
[Had Job been able to see the design of God in that dispensation towards him, (as
sent in the purest love;) and the end in which it was soon to issue, (his greatly
augmented happiness and prosperity;) had he contemplated the benefit that was to
arise from it to his own soul (both in present sanctification and in eternal glory,) and
to the Church of God in all ages, (in having such an example of sufferings and
patience set before them,) he would never have uttered such complaints as these: he
would have acknowledged then, what he afterwards so clearly saw, that “the Judge
of all the earth did right.” Thus if we also in our trials would look to the final issue
of them, we should bear them all, whether little or great, with resignation and
composure. We see Jacob complaining, “All these things are against me,” and yet at
last find, that the loss he so deplored was the salvation of him and all his family: it
was a link in the chain of providence to accomplish God’s gracious purposes in the
preservation of the chosen seed, and ultimately in the redemption of the world, by
Him who was to spring from the loins of Judah. And if we saw every thing as God
does, we should see that the very trials of which we complain are sent by God as the
best means of effecting the everlasting salvation of our souls; and we should unite in
the testimony of David, that “God in very faithfulness has caused us to be afflicted.”
Let us be contented then to leave every thing to the disposal of an all-wise God: let
us in the darkest seasons “possess our souls in patience;” assured, that “he doeth all
things well;” and let us say with Job when in his better mind, “Though he slay me,
yet will I trust in him.”]
2. The inability of Satan to prevail against the Lord’s people—
[Satan had hoped that he should instigate Job to “curse God to his face:” but in this
he was disappointed. Job did indeed “curse his day;” but never for a moment
thought of cursing his God. On the contrary, he often spake of God in the most
honourable and reverential terms. But Satan is a chained adversary: he can prevail
no further than God sees fit to permit him. He could not have done any thing
against Job, if he had not first obtained leave of God. either can he do any thing
against the least of God’s people, any further than God is pleased to suffer him with
a view to their eternal good. He “desired to sift Peter as wheat:” but the intercession
of Christ preserved his servant from being finally overcome. “He is a roaring lion,
going about seeking whom he may devour:” but he cannot seize on one of the lambs

of Christ’s flock. They are kept in safety by the Good Shepherd; and “none can
pluck them out of his hand.” God has provided for his people, “armour, by means of
which they shall be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand
[ ote: Ephesians 6:10-18.].” or do the more aged and experienced alone defeat
him; “the young men also overcome him [ ote: 1 John 2:13-14.],” yea, all that are
begotten of God are enabled so to “resist him, that he flees from them [ ote: James
4:7.],” and “toucheth them not [ ote: 1 John 5:18.].” He may be permitted to tempt
and try us [ ote: Revelation 2:10.]; but he is a vanquished enemy [ ote: John
12:31.], and “shall be bruised under our feet shortly [ ote: Romans 16:20.].”]
3. The necessity of fleeing from the wrath to come—
[There is a period fast approaching, when all the ungodly will be reduced to a state
infinitely more calamitous than that of Job. They will indeed then, and with justice
too, “curse the day of their birth;” for it would, as our Lord himself testifies, be
“better for them that they had never been born.” O what a day of darkness awaits
them; a day wherein there will not be one ray of light to cheer their souls! Then will
they curse and “blaspheme their God, because of the plagues that he inflicts upon
them [ ote: Revelation 16:9; Revelation 16:11.].” They will wish for death also, and
“call upon the rocks to fall upon them, and the hills to cover them [ ote: Revelation
6:15-17.];” but all in vain. ow if we were informed that only such troubles as Job’s
were coming upon us, what diligence should we use to avert them! how careful
should we be to preserve our property, and to guard against the disorders with
which we were threatened! ot a moment would be lost by us, nor should we decline
the use of any means, to ward off such awful calamities. How earnest then should we
be in fleeing from the wrath to come! Think, Brethren, what a fearful thing it will be
to “fall into the hands of the living God,” and to “be cast into the lake of fire and
brimstone,” “where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched [ ote: Mark
9:43-48. with Revelation 14:10-11.].” O delay not one moment to flee for refuge to
the hope set before us in the Gospel: flee to Christ, as the city of refuge, where,
notwithstanding all your past iniquities, you may find perfect rest and security. Do
not put off the great work of your souls to a time of sickness and trouble: such a
season is but ill calculated for so great a work. Look at Job: if he had neglected his
soul hitherto, how incapable would he have then been of performing those offices of
repentance and faith, which require all the energies of the mind! He could not even
compose his mind to bear his affliction aright; much less could he have employed
that season in calling his past ways to remembrance, and in turning unto God with
all his heart. So we also shall find it quite enough to bear up under the pains or
weakness of a dying hour. Let us then improve the time of health and prosperity, in
preparing for a better world, where neither sin nor sorrow shall molest us more, but
we shall be for ever happy in the bosom of our God.]
PULPIT, "The "Historical Introduction" ended, we come upon a long colloquy, in
which the several dramatis personae speak for themselves, the writer, or compiler,
only prefacing each speech with a very few necessary words. The speeches are, one
and all of them, metrical; and are well represented in the Revised Version. The first

colloquy extends from Job 3:1-26 to Job 14:22.
Job 3:1
After this opened Job his mouth. The first to take the word is Job, as, indeed,
etiquette made necessary, when the visit paid was one of condolence. It can only be
conjectured what the feelings were which had kept him silent so long. We may,
perhaps, suggest that in the countenances and manner of his friends he saw
something which displeased him, something indicative of their belief that he had
brought his afflictions upon himself by secret sins of a heinous character.
Pharisaism finds it very difficult to conceal itself; signs of it are almost sure to
escape; often it manifests itself, without a word spoken, most offensively. The
phrase, "opened his mouth," is not to be dismissed merely as a Hebraism. It is one
used only on solemn occasions, and implies the utterance of deep thoughts, well
considered beforehand (Psalms 78:21; Matthew 5:2), or of feelings long repressed,
and now at length allowed expression. And cursed his day; "cursed," i.e; the "day
of his birth." Some critics think that "cursed" is too strong a word, and suggest
"reviled;" but it cannot be denied that "to curse" is a frequent meaning of ‫ָלל‬‫ק‬ and
it is difficult to see in Job's words (verses 3-10) anything but a "curse" of a very
intense character. To curse one's natal day is not, perhaps, a very wise act, since it
can have no effect on the day or on anything else; but so great a prophet as
Jeremiah imitated Job in this respect (Jeremiah 20:14-18), so that before
Christianity it would seem that men were allowed thus to relieve their feelings. All
that such cursing means is that one wishes one had never been born.
BI 1-26, "After this opened Job his month, and cursed his day.
The peril of impulsive speech
In regard to this chapter, containing the first speech of Job, we may remark that it is
impossible to approve the spirit which it exhibits, or to believe that it was acceptable to
God. It laid the foundation for the reflections—many of them exceedingly just—in the
following chapters, and led his friends to doubt whether such a man could be truly pious.
The spirit which is manifested in this chapter is undoubtedly far from that calm
submission which religion should have produced, and from that which Job had before
evinced. That he was, in the main, a man of eminent holiness and patience, the whole
book demonstrates; but this chapter is one of the conclusive proofs that he was not
absolutely free from imperfection. We may learn—
1. That even eminently good men sometimes give utterance to sentiments which are
a departure from the spirit of religion, and which they will have occasion to regret.
Here there was a language of complaint, and a bitterness of expression, which
religion cannot sanction, and which no pious man, on reflection, would approve.
2. We see the effect of heavy affliction on the mind. It sometimes becomes
overwhelming. It is so great that all the ordinary barriers against impatience are
swept away. The sufferer is left to utter language of murmuring, and there is the
impatient wish that life was closed, or that he had not existed.
3. We are not to infer that, because a man in affliction makes use of some
expressions which we cannot approve, and which are not sanctioned by the Word of

God, that therefore he is not a good man. There may be true piety, yet it may be far
from perfection; there may be a general submission to God, yet the calamity may be
so overwhelming as to overcome the usual restraints on our corrupt and fallen
nature; and when we remember how feeble our nature is at best, and how imperfect
is the piety of the holiest of men, we should not harshly judge him who is left to
express impatience in his trials or who gives utterance to sentiments different from
those which are sanctioned in the Word of God. There has been but one model of
pure submission on earth—the Lord Jesus Christ. And after the contemplation of the
best of men in their trials we can see that there is imperfection in them, and that if
we would survey absolute perfection in suffering we must go to Gethsemane and
Calvary.
4. Let us not make the expressions used by Job in this chapter our model in
suffering. Let us not suppose that because he used such language, therefore we may
also. Let us not infer that because they are found in the Bible, that therefore they are
right; or that because he was an unusually holy man, that it would be proper for us to
use the same language that he does. The fact that this book is a part of the inspired
truth of revelation does not make such language right. All that inspiration does in
such a case is to secure an exact record of what was actually said; it does not, of
necessity, sanction it, any more than an accurate historian can be supposed to
approve all that he records. There may be important reasons why it should be
preserved, but he who makes the record is not answerable for the truth or propriety
of what is recorded. The narrative is true; the sentiment may be false. (Albert
Barnes.)
Good men not always at their best
1. The holiest person in this life doth not always keep in the same frame of holiness.
“The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.
Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?” This was the
language we lately heard; but now cursing—certainly his spirit had been in a more
holy frame, more sedate and quiet, than now it was. At the best in this life we are but
imperfect; yet at some time we are more imperfect than we are at another.
2. Great sufferings may fill the mouths of holiest persons with great complainings.
3. Satan, with his utmost power and policy, with his strongest temptations and
assaults, can never fully attain his ends upon the children of God. What was it that
the devil undertook for? was it not to make Job curse his God? and yet when he had
done his worst, and spent his malice upon him, he could but make Job curse his
day,—this was far short of what Satan hoped.
4. God doth graciously forget and pass by the distempered speeches and bitter
complainings of His servants under great afflictions. (J. Caryl.)
Good men weakened by calamities
The calamities and the suffering have wrought upon the weakened man. Depressed in
spirit, perplexed in mind, in great bodily pain, Job opens his mouth and lifts up his
voice. Great suffering generates great passions, and great passions are oft irrepressible,
and hence the danger of extravagant speech. “Better,” says Trapp, “if Job had kept his

lips still.” Surely that were impossible in an human being! One, and only One, was silent
“as a sheep before her shearers is dumb.” Brooks says, “When God’s hand is on our back
our hand should be on our mouth.” (H. E. Stone.)
Mistaken speech
Job’s tongue is loosened and his words are many. And what other form of speech was so
true to his inmost feeling as the form which is known as malediction? The speech is but
one sentence, and it rushes from a soul that is momentarily out of equipoise. Our friends
often draw out of us the very worst that is in us. We best comment upon such words by
repeating them, by studying the probable tone in which they were uttered. Thank God
for this man, who in prosperity has uttered every thought appropriate to grief, and has
given anguish a new costume of expression.
1. Notice how terrible, after all, is Satanic power. Look at Job if you would see how
much the devil can, under Divine permission, do to human life. Perhaps it was well
that, in one instance at least, we should see the devil at his worst.
2. See what miracles may be wrought in human experience. In Job’s malediction,
existence was felt to be a burden; but existence was never meant to be a heavy
weight. It was meant to be a joy, a hope, a rehearsal of music and service of a quality
and range now inconceivable. But under Satanic agency even existence is felt to be an
intolerable burden. Even this miracle can be wrought by Satan. He can turn our
every faculty into a heavy calamity. He can so play upon our nerves as to make us feel
that feeling is intolerable. But the speech of Job is full of profound mistakes, and the
mistakes are only excusable because they were perpetrated by an unbalanced mind.
(J. Parker, D. D.)
Infirmity appearing
At the ebb. As soon as the tide turned, numbers of crows and jackdaws came down upon
the shore. While the beautiful waves were splashing over the sand there was no room for
these black visitors; but as soon as the waters left, the harvest of these scavengers began.
It seemed as though they must have carried watches, so well did they know the time of
the receding tides. When the tide of grace runs low, how infirmities come upon us! If the
tide of joy ebbs, the black birds of discontent soon appear, while doubts and fears always
make their appearance if faith sinks low. (Footsteps of Truth.)
Defect in the best of men
Life at its best has a crack in it. Somehow the trail of the serpent is all over it. The most
perfect man is imperfect, the most innocent man has his weak point. The infant Achilles
in the Greek legend is dipped in the waters of the Styx, and the touch of the wave makes
him invulnerable; but the water has not touched the heel by which his mother held him,
and to that vulnerable heel the deathly arrow finds its way. Siegfried, in the “Nibelungen
Lied,” bathes in the dragon’s blood, and it has made him, too, invulnerable; but,
unknown to him, a lime tree leaf has fluttered down upon his back, and into the vital
spot where the blood has not touched his skin the murderer’s dagger smites. Everything
in the Icelandic Saga has sworn not to injure Balder, the brightest and most beloved of

all the northern gods; but the insignificant mistletoe has not been asked to take the oath,
and by the mistletoe he dies. These are the dim, sad allegories by which the world
indicates that even the happiest man cannot be all happy, nor the most invincible
altogether safe, nor the best altogether good. (Dean Farrar.)
Job’s distemper
Albeit Job’s weakness do thus for a time break forth, when his reason and experience are
at under, and he is sensible of nothing but pain and sorrow, yet he doth not persist in
this distemper, nor is it the only thing that appears in the furnace, but he hath much
better purpose afterward in the behalf of God. And therefore, as in a battle men do not
judge of affairs by what may occur in the heat of the conflict, wherein parties may retire
and fall on again, but by the issue of the fight; so Job is not to be judged by those fits of
distemper, seeing he recovered out of them at last; those violent fits do serve to
demonstrate the strength of grace in him which prevailed at last over them all.
1. There are, in the most subdued child of God, strong corruptions ready to break
forth in trial. The best of men ought to be sensible that they have, by nature, an evil
heart of unbelief, even when they are strong in faith; that they have lukewarmness
under their zeal, passion under their meekness.
2. Albeit natural corruptions may lurk long, even in the furnace of affliction, yet long
and multiplied temptations will bring it forth.
(1) Every exercise and trial will not be a trial to every man, nor an irritation to
every corruption within him.
(2) The length and continuance of a trial is a new trial, and may discover that
which the simple trial doth not reach.
(3) When men get leisure in cold blood to reflect and pore upon their case it will
prove more grievous than at first it doth.
(4) When men are disappointed of what they expect under trouble (as Job was of
his friends’ comfort), it will grieve them more than if they, in sobriety, had
expected no such thing. Doctrine—The Lord, in judging of the grace and integrity
of His followers, doth afford many grains of allowance, and graciously passeth
over much weakness, wherein they do not approve themselves. (George
Hutcheson.)
Job cursing his day
How can Job be set up with so much admiration for a mirror of patience, who makes
such bitter complainings, and breaks out into such distempered passions? He seems to
be so far from patience that he wants prudence; so far from grace, that he wants reason
itself and good nature; his speeches report him mad or distracted, breaking the bounds
of modesty and moderation, striking that which had not hurt him, and striking that
which he could not hurt—his birthday. Some prosecute the impatience of Job with much
impatience, and are over-passionate against Job’s passion. Most of the Jewish writers
tax him at the least as bordering on blasphemy, if not blaspheming. Nay, they censure
him as one taking heed to, and much depending upon, astrological observations, as if
man’s fate or fortune were guided by the constellations of heaven, by the sight and

aspect of the planets in the day of his nativity. Others carry the matter so far, on the
other hand, altogether excusing and, which is more, commending, yea applauding Job,
in this act of “cursing his day.” They make this curse an argument of his holiness, and
these expostulations as a part of his patience, contending—
1. That they did only express (as they ought) the suffering of his sensitive part, as a
man, and so were opposite to Stoical apathy, not to Christian patience.
2. That he spake all this not only according to the law of sense, but with exact
judgment, and according to the law of soundest reason. I do not say but that Job
loved God, and loved Him exceedingly all this while, but whether we should so far
acquit Job I much doubt. We must state the matter in the middle way. Job is neither
rigidly to be taxed of blasphemy or profaneness, nor totally to be excused, especially
not flatteringly commended, for this high complaint.
It must be granted that Job discovered much frailty and infirmity, some passion and
distemper, in this complaint and curse; yet notwithstanding, we must assert him for a
patient man, and there are five things considerable for the clearing and proof of this
assertion.
1. Consider the greatness of his suffering: his wound was very deep and deadly, his
burden was very heavy, only not intolerable.
2. Consider the multiplicity of his troubles. They were great and many—many little
afflictions meeting together make a great one; how great, then, is that which is
composed of many great ones!
3. Consider the long continuance of these great and many troubles: they continued
long upon him—some say they continued divers years upon him.
4. Consider this, that his complainings and acts of impatience were but a few; but his
submission and acts of meekness, under the hand of God, were very many.
5. Take this into consideration, that though he did complain, and complain bitterly,
yet he recovered out of those complainings. He was not overcome with impatience,
though some impatient speeches came from him; he recalls what he had spoken, and
repents for what he had done. Look not alone upon the actings of Job, when he was
in the height and heat of the battle; look to the onset, he was so very patient in the
beginning, though vehemently stirred, that Satan had not a word to say. Look to the
end, and you cannot say but Job was a patient man, full of patience—a mirror of
patience, if not a miracle of patience; a man whose face shined with the glory of that
grace, above all the children of men. Learn—
(1) The holiest person in this life doth not always keep in the same frame of
holiness.
(2) Great sufferings may fill the mouths of holiest persons with great
complainings,
(3) God doth graciously pass by and forget the distempered speeches and bitter
complainings of His servants under great afflictions. (Joseph Caryl.)
The speech of Job and its misapprehensions
Job’s speech is full of profound mistakes, which are only excusable because they were
perpetrated by an unbalanced mind. The eloquent tirade proceeds upon the greatest

Job 3 commentary

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Job 3 commentary