Moved by the sympathising presence of his friends, Job loses his self-control, and breaks out into a passionate cry for death The expressive gestures of Job's friends betokened the liveliest sympathy, and their silence of seven days indicated how awful they felt his calamity to be. And we often lea... [ Continue Reading ]
_cursed his day_ The day of his birth. Reverent minds have always found difficulty in accommodating themselves to the religious boldness of the Book of Job. A curious instance of this is given in the Catena of Greek interpreters on Job, where one writer interprets Job's "day" to be the day when man... [ Continue Reading ]
Would God I had never been conceived or born This is the idea really expressed when Job curses his day and wishes it blotted out of existence. First he curses the day of his birth and the night of his conception together, Job 3:3, and then each separately, the day in two verses and the night in fou... [ Continue Reading ]
_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 c... [ Continue Reading ]
_regard it_ lit. _seek after it_, or care for it. Let it perish from His mind that He cause no sun to rise upon it.... [ Continue Reading ]
_shadow of death stain it_ Rather, CLAIM IT, lit. _redeem it_. Let it become part of the possession of darkness. The word, however, does not mean _re_claim, as if the idea were that the day had been won from darkness by light and was to be reconquered. The translation "shadow _of death_" possibly re... [ Continue Reading ]
_let it not be joined unto_ Rather, LET IT NOT REJOICE AMONG. Let it not enter the joyful troop of days, glad in its existence and its beauty. Another way of spelling the word gives the meaning, let it not be joined unto.... [ Continue Reading ]
_be solitary_ Rather perhaps, _barren_, as Isaiah 49:21. Let it not experience a parent's joy, and le nought that lives date its birth from it. _no joyful voice_ of birthday rejoicing.... [ Continue Reading ]
The most probable sense of this verse is, Let them that curse days curse it, Them that are skilled to rouse up the Dragon. They that curse days or the day are enchanters and magicians, who were believed to have power to cast their spells upon a day and overwhelm it with darkness and misfortune. P... [ Continue Reading ]
_the twilight thereof_ that is, the morning twilight of that night. Let its morning stars, that should herald its day, go out as the next clause explains: let it look for the light of a day that never breaks. _see the dawning of the day_ lit. _behold the eyelids of the morning_. This beautiful figu... [ Continue Reading ]
_the doors of my mother's womb_ to hinder conception or fruitfulness, Genesis 20:18; 1 Samuel 1:5. The crime of the night is deferred to the last, and the curse closes with the mention of it.... [ Continue Reading ]
Would God I had died from my birth If he must be born, Job asks, Why he did not die from the womb? his eye turning to the next possibility and chance of escaping sorrow. Had he died he would have been at peace; and the picture of the painless stillness of death fascinates him and he dwells long on... [ Continue Reading ]
_the knees prevent me_ Rather, RECEIVE, or meet me. The reference may be to the father's knees, on which the new born child was laid, or more general. As to the expression, see Genesis 50:23; Isaiah 66:12. The sufferer's eye runs over all the chances of death which he had miserably lost, when he cam... [ Continue Reading ]
The words receive their pathos from the contrast of his present anguish, Job 3:26.... [ Continue Reading ]
_which built desolate places_ The expression seems to be that which occurs several times in Scripture, e.g. Isaiah 58:12; Isaiah 61:4; Ezekiel 36:10; Ezekiel 36:33; Malachi 1:4, and means to build up or rebuild ruins, i. e. cities or habitations desolated or abandoned, and make them again inhabited.... [ Continue Reading ]
_their houses with silver_ There is no reason for supposing that "houses" means mausoleums or tombs. The reference is not to the practice of burying treasures along with the dead, nor to the idea that the pomp of riches could thus be perpetuated in death. It is those who were famous in this life wit... [ Continue Reading ]
With strong revulsion from the anguish of life Job desires even if possible a deeper death than to have died when born, even the death of having been dead born, scarcely to be distinguished from non-existence itself. Comp. Ecclesiastes 4:2-3, with Plumptre's notes and citations from the classics.... [ Continue Reading ]
_cease from troubling_ That is, probably, not from troubling others, but from the unquiet of their own evil. Job 3:17-19 contain the two main ideas, first, that all, evil and good, great and small, are the same in the place of the dead; and second, that this common condition is one of profound rest.... [ Continue Reading ]
_the prisoners rest together_ The "prisoners" are not those immured in prison, but captives driven to forced labour. _the oppressor_ The taskmaster, Exodus 3:7. The prisoners are there all together, and they hear not the voice, the shouts and curses of the driver ch. Job 39:7).... [ Continue Reading ]
_small and great are there_ i. e. are there alike, the same.... [ Continue Reading ]
_Wherefore is light given_ This is a possible translation, but more probably we should render, WHEREFORE GIVES HE LIGHT? the Author of light and life being alluded to obliquely and not named. _The bitter_is plur., those that are bitter in soul. Job's eye looks over mankind and sees many in the same... [ Continue Reading ]
Why does God continue life to the wretched, who long for death? The vision of the peacefulness of death passes away, and Job awakens again to the consciousness of his real condition, and his words, which had sunk into calmness as he contemplated the peace of death, now seem to rise again like the s... [ Continue Reading ]
_rejoice exceedingly_ lit. _rejoice even to exultation_, Hosea 9:1.... [ Continue Reading ]
_whose way is hid_ Job now narrows his view from the general sorrows of mankind to himself. His way is hid or lost, the clear path of his former life has suddenly broken off, or as the second clause of the verse expresses it, has been shut in by a hedge, set by God across it. The reference is not me... [ Continue Reading ]
_before I eat_ lit. _before my meat_, as margin. The temporal meaning of _before_gives no sense here. In 1 Samuel 1:16 the same expression occurs, "Count not thine handmaid _for_a daughter of Belial." Therefore render, my sighing cometh _for_(instead of, or, like) my meat; it is his constant, daily... [ Continue Reading ]