Job 3:1-10

THE MEANING OF SILENCE

Chapter s 314

I.

NO EXIT: HELL IS OTHER PEOPLESartre SPEECHES FULL OF SOUND AND FURY Job 3:1, Job 14:22

A.

WHY ME, LORD? (Job 3:1-26)

1.

He curses his day. (Job 3:1-10)

TEXT 3:1-10

3

After this opened Job his month, and coned his day. 2 And Job answered and said:

3

Let the day perish wherein I was born,

And the night which said, There is a man-child conceived.

4

Let that day be darkness;

Let not God from above seek for it,
Neither let the light shine upon it.

5

Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it for their own;

Let a cloud dwell upon it;
Let all that maketh black the day terrify it.

6

As for that night, let thick darkness seize upon it:

Let it not rejoice among the days of the year;

Let it not come into the number of the months.

7

Lo, let that night be barren;

Let no joyful voice come therein.

8

Let them curse it that curse the day,

Who are ready to rouse up leviathan.

9

Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark:

Let it look for light, but have none;
Neither let it behold the eyelids of the morning:

10

Because it shut not up the doors of my mother'Swomb,

Nor hid trouble from mine eyes.

COMMENT 3:1-10

Job on Dover Beach?

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl-'d.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar
Retreating to the breath
Of the night-wind down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

M. Arnold, Dover Beach

Job 3:1-2Why Me, Lord? Except for Job 3:1-2, the entire section from Job 3:1, Job 31:40 is in poetic form. This is important for understanding the text, as poetry is parallel in literary form, which means that each line is not necessarily a new thought. In between Job's initial (chp. 3) and concluding (chps. 29-31) soliloquies, we encounter a series of alternate speeches by the three friends with Job's response.[45] Eliphaz speaks first (chps. 4-5), after chp. 3, Zophar perhaps speaks last, before chps. 29-31. Thus, we are presented with nine speeches by Job's friends alternating with eight responses from Job. The literary form is that of a lament, i.e., a prayer of petition in which Job appeals to God for a hearing, describes his destitution, anxieties, and attacks from his enemies, and asks God to break His silence and heal or explain his suffering. The three wise men attempt to console Job by entering in the lamentation. Each of the three consolers conveys his doctrine on retribution. Because of their concept of retribution, they come prepared to participate in a psalm of penitence, whereas Job cries out from the depth of his anguish in a psalm of innocence. Does suffering always imply guilt? Does a successful life always imply innocence?[46] Job's consolers only manage to intensify his anguish. Here we are faced with the paradoxconsolers that are not consolers. One of the results of this fact is that two subordinate themes enter Job's lament: (1) denunciation of enemies, and (2) his oath of exultation. As Job's condition worsens, the consolers persist in claiming that they are merely pronouncing God's judgment on Job. As a result, he includes God as one of his enemies, i.e., the nature of God as presented by his calamitous comforters. The central issue in Job's trial is the nature of God, not the nature of suffering and evil. If God loves him, why all the suffering? The ultimate answer is available only in the resurrected Suffering Servant.[47] After this means after the seven days of silence (Genesis 15:14; Genesis 25:26). Job now breaks his silence as he opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. When he prospered, he perhaps never thought of such a response. Though Jeremiah (chp. Job 20:14-18) too cursed the day of his birth, he was mindful of the futility of cursing a past event. What will he do with the present? As with Job, he must face the present, but how and why? Many people in the twentieth century can identify with him. These verses are clearly the introduction to Job's ensuing soliloquy.

[45] The textual problems in chps. 25-27 confront us with dilemmas regarding the last few speeches; note commentary regarding these matters. The conventional grouping of the speeches into three cycles might not represent the author's style.
[46] As America enters its third century, it is a most appropriate matter to consider. The American Dream has turned into a nightmare because most Americans share the doctrine of Job's three friends, i.e., if we-'re successful, this means God is blessing our existence; if we are failures, we are not pleasing God, thus the presence of suffering. Biblically, much of the Bicentennial emphasis is heretical. We are Christians by vocation and Americans by avocation.

[47] A. Feuillet, L-'enigme de la souffrance et al response de Dieu, Dieu vivant, 17 (1950), 77-91; and D. Barthelemy, Dieu meconnu par le vieil homme, Job, Vie spirituelle, 105 (1961), 445-63.

Job 3:3Job is so embittered that he wishes that life had never begun. Like Schopenhauer and Camus, Job is suggesting that suicide is the answer to unrelenting suffering. There is not one word suggesting this response as solution to Job's plight. But why not? Only if there is a God to whom we will give account because neither suffering nor death is our ultimate concern. Job telescopes the night of conception and day of birth. The night is personified with power to know the sex of the child conceived. In the Near East, the news of the birth of a son is a momentous event. Job even curses the man who brought the news of his birth to his father. Note that Job does not include direct petition for relief but begins his soliloquy with the most radical assertion of his misery, utterly rejecting life itself. Other parallels, such as Jeremiah 20:14-18; 1 Kings 19:4; Jonah 4:3-8, reveal the realism of the biblical record.[48] Each in his own way denies that the life that God has given him is good, and would have preferred not to have received it from him. Even in this rejection, there is affirmation of belief in God as creative source of life.[49] Affirmation in the Midst of Resentment! The imagery conceives God as summoning the days to take their place as their turn comes. Even in Job's denial, God is indispensable. If He can control the days, why not evil? Job, like others, wants darkness at noon. The good things in his life prior to his suffering did not produce such a response. All sunshine makes the desert.

[48] The differences between the LXX and M.T. are examined by Dhorme, Job, pp. 24ff; Pope, Job, p. 28; and W. B. Stevenson, Critical Notes on the Hebrew Text of the Poem of Job, 1951.

[49] After western man moves into the 19th and 20th scientific revolutions and is less committed to Christian theism, we are confronted with The Death of God from Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra to Rubenstein's After Auschwitz.

Job 3:4Our limited English vocabulary for darkness makes translation difficult in Job 3:4-6. Different words for darkness express everything that is mysterious and evil (Job 12:25; Exodus 20:21; Isaiah 5:20; Psalms 82:5; and see also Matthew 5:23).

Job 3:5Our text (A.V.) translates salmawet as the shadow of death. If the older view is correct, i.e., that the word is a compound word from shadow and death, then the translation is sound; but more recent lexicography prefers salmut as the reading, thus the root for dark. May the day be eclipsed (M.T. kimrire yom) meaning like bitterness of the day. The word is used in the context where there is no thought of deathAmos 5:9; Job 28:3.[50]

[50] See discussion by Dhorme, Job, pp. 26ff; D. W. Thomas, Journal of Semitic Studies, VII, 1962, 191ff, who argues for the salmawet reading.

Job 3:6Let thick darkness seize it in the sense of claim[51] it for its own.

[51] See N. H. Snaith's discussion of this root in Annual of Leeds University Oriental Society, III, 1963, 60ff.

Job 3:7Job asks that the night be barren, (Hebrew galmud), stony or unproductive. The word is used in Isaiah 49:21 for childlessness, i.e., barren. May the night never again see offspring, so that no one else experiences the misery known by Job. May the night be sterile, then surely suffering will cease.[52]

[52] For the magnificent witness of a contemporary sufferer, read Corrie Ten Boom, Tramp for The Lord and The Hiding Place (New Jersey: Spire, Revell, pbs., 1976 printing.)

Job 3:8Out of his resentful heart comes only cursing. CurseCurse! Here we have two different Hebrew words, both different from the one used in Job 3:1. Speiser has demonstrated that the word means to cast a spell on.[53] Job calls for a professional curser, i.e., those who are skilled to rouse up Leviathan, (Hebrew liwyah, wreath, meaning something coiled). There has been much discussion concerning the supposed mythological allusion since Gunkel published his Schopfung und Chaos, 1895 (see esp. pp. 59-61), but the text makes perfectly good sense without any such origin for its imagery.[54]

[53] E. H. Speiser, Journal of American Oriental Society, LXXX, 1960, 198ff; see also the Balaam account in Numbers 22-24 for expert in cursing or blessing.

[54] See W. F. Albright, Journal of Biblical Literature, LVII, 1938, 227, and his arguments for repointing yom-day, toyam-sea. But this is unnecessary; the text makes perfectly good sense without it.

Job 3:9The word nesep means twilight, either the morning as here and Job 7:4 or evening twilight as in Job 24:15 and Proverbs 7:9. The reference here is surely to the morning stars Mercury and Venus. If they had remained dark, Job's day would not have come. Without the light of the dawn, he would not be able to see[55] the new day.

[55] For the discussion concerning the Hebrew -ap appayim, see Mitchell Dahood, Psalms, Vol. III, note on Psalms 132:4 where he cites a Qumran text 4Q184.-13 in support of eyes instead of eyelids in the above verse; also Dhorme's Job, pp. 29ff modification of the text is unnecessary.

Job 3:10The A. V. correctly sees reference to Job's mother's womb from the literal Hebrew which says my womb, i.e., the womb from which I came. The night did not prevent the womb from conceiving, nor hid trouble, i.e., toil, sorrow and suffering from Job. Now the sufferer turns from God to himself, and a new factor enters Job's complaint. The query why in Job 3:11-12, and again in Job 3:20, is a crucial new development.