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Commentaries and Other Bible Study Helps - Prayer Tents - Prayer Tents
3:1-42:6 Dialogue: Job, His Suffering, and His Standing before God. Between the brief narrative sections of the prologue (1:1-2:13) and epilogue (42:7-17), the large central section of the book consists of dialogue in poetic form (except for the narrative introduction of Elihu in 32:1-5) that focuses on the question of what Job's suffering reveals both about him and about God's governing of the world. This section progresses in five main parts: Job's opening lament (3:1-26), a lengthy section of interchanges between the three friends and Job (4:1-25:6), Job's closing monologue (26:1-31:40), Elihu's response (32:1-37:24), and the Lord's appearance to and interaction with Job (38:1-42:6).
3:1-26 Job: Despair for the Day of His Birth. After the prose introduction (vv. 1-2), Job curses the day of his birth (vv. 3-10), expanding on this theme with two sequences of "why?" questions: the first expresses longing for rest (vv. 11-19); the second laments his anxious suffering (vv. 20-26). Job's opening lament plays off the vocabulary of light and darkness in relation to both questions of the section: "Why did I not die at birth?" (v. 11) and "Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in?" (v. 23). Job is mystified by his current circumstances, and here he wonders whether he would have been better off in the darkness of never being born at all rather than having the light of life result in such suffering and grief. The vocabulary of Job's lament is the beginning of a theme throughout the dialogue with his friends in which darkness and light will be used to refer to both death and life as well as to what is hidden and what is revealed.
3:1-2 Introduction. Job cursed the day of his birth because it represented the path of his entire life, which had led to his present distress.
3:3-10 Job Curses His Birth. In skillfully crafted poetry, Job rues the moment of his birth--in distinction from the birth itself: he will continue to see life as a divine gift (see note on 10:8-13), and he does not ever appear to be suicidal. Rather, he wishes that reality had been different, and that he would not have seen the light of day.
3:8 Aspects of ancient myth are sometimes referenced metaphorically in Scripture, often in images of God's power or authority (cf. 26:12). By referring here to those who set a curse upon a day by calling upon Leviathan (see note on Ps. 74:14), Job calls for their incantations as one more piece of his lament against the day of his birth.
3:11-19 Job Longs for Rest. Job's futile curses progress from the day of his birth to the first moments of life. Just as he wishes the day was darkness and time erased, so too he wishes that life had been death (vv. 11-12, 16), for at least that would have brought peace in the company of the dead (vv. 13-15, 17-19).
3:13-19 Job describes death as rest from the toil of life by picturing its effect on persons both high and low in society, and wishes he had joined all who were already in this state of rest rather than being born. In vv. 13-15 Job refers to the kings and princes who labored to obtain wealth and build cities but now lay without them in death. In vv. 16-19 Job focuses on the way death removes the constraints of social position, focusing attention particularly on the small and the slave, and those who have been weary or prisoners.
3:20-26 Job Laments His Suffering. The final sequence of "why" questions reflects Job's current miserable state, carrying forward the themes of light (vv. 20, 23) and death (vv. 21-22). Musing on those who dig for treasures (v. 21b), Job anticipates the terms in which some of his puzzles will be solved in the poem on "wisdom" (see ch. 28).
3:23 In his accusation, Satan argued that Job was upright only because God had put a "hedge" of blessing around him (1:10). Here in the opening lament of the dialogues, Job refers to his sustained life amid inscrutable circumstances of suffering as rendering him one whom God has hedged in. Satan's contention is disproved through Job's continued faithfulness. Job's overall lament of his situation is something which God both reproves (see chs. 38-41) and commends (42:7).
