Job 3:8

That curse the day, i.e. their day, to wit, their birthday; for the pronoun is here omitted for the metre's sake; for this and the following Chapter s are written in verse, as all grant. So the sense is, when their afflictions move them to curse their own birthday, let them remember mine also, and bestow some curses upon it. Or the day of their distress and trouble, which sometimes is called simply the day, as Obadiah 1:12. Or the day of the birth or death of that person, whose funerals are celebrated by the hired mourners, who in their solemn lamentations used to curse the day that gave them such a person, whom they should so suddenly lose; and therefore it had been better never to have enjoyed him, and to curse the day in which he died as an unlucky and execrable day. Or, the day, i.e. the daylight; which to some persons is a hateful thing, and the object of their curses, namely, to lewd persons and thieves, to whom the morning light is even as the shadow of death, Job 24:17; as also to persons oppressed with deep melancholy, as it is here implied, Job 3:20. So the sense is this, They who use to curse the day only, but generally love and bless the night, yet let this night be as abominable and execrable to them as the day-time generally is. Who are ready to raise up their mourning; who are brimful of sorrow, and always ready to pour out their cries, and tears, and complaints, and with them curses, as men in great passions frequently do; or, such mourning men, or mourning women, whose common employment it was, and who were hired to mourn, and therefore were always ready to do so upon funeral occasions; of which see 2 Chronicles 35:25 Jeremiah 9:17,18,20 Eze 30:2 Joel 1:15 Amos 5:16 Matthew 9:23. And this sense suits with the use of the last word in Hebrew writers, of which a plain and pertinent instance is given by the learned Mercer. But because that word is commonly used in another sense for the leviathan, both in this book and elsewhere in Scripture, as Psalms 74:14, Psalms 104:26 Isaiah 27:1, and because this very phrase of raising the leviathan is used afterward, Job 41:25, others render the words thus, who are prepared or ready to raise the leviathan. It is evident that the leviathan was a great and dreadful fish, or sea monster, though there be some disagreement about its kind or quality, and that the raising of or endeavouring to catch the leviathan was a dangerous and terrible work, as is plain from Job 41. And therefore those seamen who have been generally noted for great swearers and cursers, especially when their passions of rage or fear are raised, being now labouring to catch this sea monster, and finding themselves and their vessel in great danger from him, they fall to their old trade of swearing and cursing, and curse the day wherein they were born, and the day in which they ventured upon this most hazardous and terrible work. Others understand this leviathan mystically, as it is used Isaiah 27:1, for the great enemy of God's church and people, called there also the dragon, to wit, the devil, whom the magicians both now do, and formerly did, use to raise with fearful curses and imprecations. Not as if Job did justify this practice, but only it is a rash and passionate wish, that they who pour forth so many curses undeservedly, would bestow their deserved curses upon this day.