Job 3
“I should have been born dead?”
”Curse the day I was born”
1Job finally broke the silence by cursing the day he was born. 2This is what he said:3Damn the day I was born,
The night they announced my arrival,
"It’s a boy!"
4Hide that day in darkness.
May God never look for it.
May the light never reveal it.
5Give it to the gloomy night.
Hide it with the clouds.
Let it fear the dark.
6Darken the night that swallows it.
Don’t honor it with a birthday party.
Erase it from the calendar.
7It should have been an empty night.
A night without the cry of happy news.
8I wish sorcerers had put a curse on that day,
Those who curse the chaotic Sea [1]
And can call up its monster, Leviathan. [2]
9May the day see darkness, not morning stars.
Let it hope for light but never see it.
May it see only the inside of closed eyelids.
10For this is the day I was born
Into a world of trouble.
“Why was I born?”
11Why didn’t I die at birth?Why didn’t I come out and drop dead?
12Why did I end up on some stranger’s lap,
Sucking on her breasts?
13Dead, I could have rested in peace,
Sleeping in peaceful rest.
14I’d rest in the company
of dead kings and advisors
Who had built kingdoms from ruins.
15I’d be with wealthy princes
Who stocked their homes with silver and gold.
16Why wasn’t I born dead,
As a child who never saw light of day?
17In the dead zone, bad people stop misbehaving.
And tired souls find rest.
18Prisoners finally relax,
In a place without guards or wardens.
19The rich and poor are there together,
With the free and the slaves who have died.
Why give life to a miserable soul?
20Why light up misery,Or give life to the miserable.
21They live to die but linger in life,
Hunting death like elusive treasure.
22They celebrate when they find it,
Happy at home in a grave.
23Why give light when there’s nowhere to go
Because God put them in prison.
24My food for the day, my bread and water
Are moans and groans and pain sounds.
25My greatest fear has come to life.
The worst case scenario is playing now.
26For me there is no quiet, peace, or rest.
All I have now is trouble.
Footnotes
Job might be saying he wants a sorcerer strong enough to calm the angry Sea and the Leviathan sea monster. But instead, he might be wanting a sorcerer who would literally call on Leviathan to destroy the day.
There was an ancient myth in Canaan, in what became the Jewish nation, that a seven-headed monster creature lived in the sea: Leviathan. The name shows up in Job 3:8; 41:1 and in Isaiah 27:1. The psalm writer in Psalm 74:14 uses the name to argue that God is stronger than the strongest creatures we can imagine. It’s unclear if Jews of ancient times believed the stories. But they lived by the Mediterranean Sea and they seemed to prefer herding and farming to sea travel or saltwater fishing. Phoenicia in what is now Lebanon was the seafaring nation. Israel seemed to lean more toward sea-fearing. In fairness, they didn’t have a natural harbor on the coast. King Herod the Great, a thousand years after King David, built a huge harbor at Caesarea, north of what is now Tel Aviv.
Discussion Questions
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