Job 3
About JobWritten by AI
Job is a long poem framed by a short story. A good man loses his wealth, his children, and his health, and no one tells him why. The writer and the date are unknown: the story is set in the age of the patriarchs, but the book may have been written much later, and Christians hold different views on when. Some Jewish tradition credits Moses.
After two prose chapters, Job and three friends trade speeches in rounds. The friends insist suffering must be punishment for sin; Job insists he is innocent and pleads for God to answer him. A younger man, Elihu, speaks next. Then the LORD Himself answers out of the whirlwind, and the story closes in prose.
Read the friends with care. They say many true things about God, but they apply them wrongly, and at the end God says they have not spoken of Him accurately as Job has (42:7). Watch for Job's flashes of hope in the dark: “I know that my Redeemer lives.”
Before you read Job 3Written by AI
Job breaks the silence with a lament. He curses the day he was born and wishes he had died at birth, where the weary are at rest. He does not curse God, but he holds nothing back. This raw honesty is part of the Bible too; the poetry of the book begins here.
Job Laments His Birth
After this, Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. And this is what he said:
“May the day of my birth perish,
and the night it was said,
‘A boy is conceived.’
If only that day had turned to darkness!
May God above disregard it;
may no light shine upon it.
May darkness and gloom reclaim it,
and a cloud settle over it;
may the blackness of the day overwhelm it.
If only darkness had taken that night away!
May it not appear among the days of the year;
may it never be entered in any of the months.
Behold, may that night be barren;
may no joyful voice come into it.
May it be cursed by those who curse the day—
those prepared to rouse Leviathan.
May its morning stars grow dark;
may it wait in vain for daylight;
may it not see the breaking of dawn.
For that night did not shut the doors of the womb
to hide the sorrow from my eyes.
Why did I not perish at birth;
why did I not die as I came from the womb?
Why were there knees to receive me,
and breasts that I should be nursed?
For now I would be lying down in peace;
I would be asleep and at rest
with kings and counselors of the earth,
who built for themselves cities now in ruins,
or with princes who had gold,
who filled their houses with silver.
Or why was I not hidden like a stillborn child,
like an infant who never sees daylight?
There the wicked cease from raging,
and there the weary find rest.
The captives enjoy their ease;
they do not hear the voice of the oppressor.
Both small and great are there,
and the slave is freed from his master.
Why is light given to the miserable,
and life to the bitter of soul,
who long for death that does not come,
and search for it like hidden treasure,
who rejoice and greatly exult
when they reach the grave?
Why is life given to a man whose way is hidden,
whom God has hedged in?
I sigh when food is put before me,
and my groans pour out like water.
For the thing I feared has overtaken me,
and what I dreaded has befallen me.
I am not at ease or quiet;
I have no rest, for trouble has come.”