Tyndale Open Study Notes

Verse 1

3:1-26 Job’s outburst did not mean that his integrity had cracked under the strain (42:7-8; Jas 5:11). Elijah and Jeremiah, both godly men, used the same hyperbolic language (1 Kgs 19:4; Jer 20:14-18).

3:1-10 Job spoke and thus put at risk his refusal to sin with his mouth (1:21; 2:10). • Job cursed the day of his birth in great detail. However, his words sound more like pitiful complaints. Job didn’t curse God as his creator, but he lamented the conditions of his existence.

Verse 5

3:5 Job longed for the sinister darkness of the underworld (Exod 10:22; Prov 4:19; Joel 2:2) and the gloom of death (Job 10:21-22; 38:17) to claim the day of his birth.

Verse 8

3:8 The expression experts at cursing refers to professional cursers such as Balaam (Num 22–24).

Verse 9

3:9 Venus and Mercury, the morning stars, herald the dawn (38:7).

Verse 10

3:10 shut my mother’s womb: Closing or opening the womb sometimes refers to conception (Gen 16:2; 20:18; 29:31; 30:22; 1 Sam 1:5-6), but here it refers to birth (see also Job 38:8).

Verse 11

3:11-24 Job’s language turns from curse to lamentation. Job alternates between repugnance for life and a romance with death. Seven times, Job laments his situation by asking why (3:11, 12, 16, 20, 23; see Pss 10:1; 22:1; Jer 20:18; Lam 5:20).

Verse 14

3:14 The dead were thought to continue their identities and social status after death. Perhaps Job wanted the world’s kings and prime ministers to acknowledge his own princely status (1:3).

Verse 15

3:15 rich in gold, whose palaces were filled with silver: This might refer to treasure-filled tombs, but it more likely refers to the futile hoarding of wealth that ends in death (as in 3:14).

Verse 20

3:20 Job equated light with life (33:30; see John 1:4; 8:12). • Bitter might mean “short-tempered” (Judg 18:25), “enraged” (2 Sam 17:8), “anguish” (Job 7:11), “distress” (Prov 31:6), or “discontented” (1 Sam 1:10; 22:2).

Verse 21

3:21 People in misery long for death with the desperation of those who dig for hidden treasure.