Job 3:3

Let the day perish wherein I was born,.... Here begins Job's form of cursing his day, and which explains what is meant by it; and it may be understood either of the identical day of his birth, and

Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man child conceived. The night in which - rather, 'the night which said.' The words in italics are not in the Hebrew.

Let the remembrance of that day be utterly lost; yea, I heartily wish that it had never been. Such wishes are apparently foolish and impatient, and yet have been sometimes forced from wise and good men in grievous distresses, not as if they expected any effect of them, but only to show their abhorrency of life, and to express the intolerableness of their grief, and to give some vent to their passions. In which it was said with joy and triumph, as happy tidings. Compare . Conceived; or rather, brought forth, as this word is used, ; for the time of conception is unknown commonly to women themselves, and doth not use to be reported among men, as this day is supposed to be.

Job 3:3 Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night [in which] it was said, There is a man child conceived.Ver. 3. Let the day perish wherein I was born] He curseth his birthday, which the Greeks call γενεθλιον, quasi γενεσιναθλιον: the beginning of a man’ s nativity they call the begetting of his misery; because he is non prius natus quam damnatus (Aug.), no sooner born but damned to the mines of misery, Job 14:1. Crying he comes into the world, and before he speaketh he prophesieth, and saith in effect, Tιβιοςειμηβια; σωμαμενσημα, χρωμαπτωμα, δεμαςδεσμος, γενεσιςειςγηνωσος, &c. Nasci poena, labor vita, necesse mori. To be born is a penalty, to labour life, to die necessary. Oh that I had ne’ er been born! Woe worth the day That brought me forth, and made me not away! This whole life is overspread with sins and miseries as with a filthy morphew; or as Job was with his leprosy; the anguish whereof, together with his inward troubles, so grieved and galled him, that he not only crieth out (which is natural for a man to do), but giving the reins wholly to his grief, he roareth and rageth beyond all reason; and had not the Spirit held him back, he would surely have run headlong into blasphemy and desperation, which was Satan’ s design. But in the saints, as the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and sometimes getting the upper ground (as it were), bears it down, as here in Job at this present; so the Spirit again lusteth against the flesh, and a great bustle there is in the good soul (as when two opposite things meet together, cold saltpetre and hot brimstone, there is a great noise; and as when Paul came to Ephesus, there was no small stir about that way, Acts 19:28-41), so that ye cannot do the things that ye would, saith the apostle, Galatians 5:17. As Job cannot do and say the good that he would, because of the flesh, so neither could he do or say the evil that he would, because of the Spirit; he curseth indeed his day, but not his wife nor friends, much less his God, as those malcontents did, Isaiah 8:21. Nay, so soon as God came into his mind, Job 3:20, the flesh was thereby, though not altogether, quailed and quelled, yet so far daunted and damped, that it kept itself within the compass of weeping and wailing; and God himself, though he find fault with Job’ s speeches for unadvised, and sometimes ranging beyond the precincts of godliness; yet acquitting him from all gross sin, he crowneth him with the garland of a famous victory, as Mr Beza here well observeth. Most wisely, therefore, and fitly doth St James warn us, that in thinking upon Job, we regard not so much what was done while the combat lasted, as what end the Lord made, James 5:11. The saints do never more prevail and triumph than when it seemeth otherwise. See Revelation 13:7 Job 12:11.

Verse 3. There is a man-child conceived.] The word הרה harah signifies to conceive; yet here, it seems, it should be taken in the sense of being born, as it is perfectly unlikely that the night of conception should be either distinctly known or published.

3. night in which it was said] Rather, the night which said. The night is personified and cursed as a conscious agent, responsible for Job’s existence, comp. Job 3:10. There is a man child conceived] Rather, a man; “A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow; but as soon as she is delivered of the child she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world,” John 16:21.

Let the day perish - “Perish the day! O that there had never been such a day! Let it be blotted from the memory of man! There is something singularly bold, sublime, and “wild” in this exclamation.

First long strophe — JOB CURSES HIS , Job 3:3-10.a. He curses his birthday, Job 3:3-5.3. Let the day perish — Literally, Perish the day! I was to be born in it! Hitzig renders, ΰεμγαε, in which I should be born.