What events and attributed statements does Job Chapter 3 record?

Atlas of Saints · Chapter summary

Job curses his birth day; the edition separately explains this as expression of misery rather than wishing evil to creation. He asks why he did not die at birth and imagines rest with kings, princes, the weary and those free from oppression. He asks why life is given to the bitter, describes his sighing and fear, and closes with questions about silence and indignation.

Chapter breakdown

Breaking the week-long silence, Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. A traditional annotation clarifies that Job did not curse God's created order, but used poetic lamentation to express the depth of human misery and his own overwhelming calamities. Job pleaded that the day he was born and the night he was conceived be blotted from existence, swallowed by darkness and the shadow of death, and excluded from the calendar of months and years. He summoned those who curse the day and are ready of rousing leviathan to curse that night, wishing its stars had been darkened and its dawn extinguished because it failed to seal his mother's womb and avert this spectacle of sorrow from his eyes.

Job questioned why he had not perished in the womb or died at the moment of birth, lamenting the maternal knees that received him and the breasts that nourished him. Had he died then, he reflected, he would now lie in tranquil slumber alongside the earthly monarchs and consuls who constructed solitudes for themselves, or among princes who possessed gold and silver. He also likened that wished-for state to a hidden untimely birth, or one conceived who had not seen the light. In the stillness of the grave, he observed, the wicked cease from causing turmoil, the exhausted find peace, captives rest together free from the shouts of their oppressors, and the servant is free from his master, with small and great sharing the same quiet earth.

Job agonized over why life and light is given to those who endure bitter misery of soul, who yearn for death more eagerly than miners search for buried treasure and rejoice when they reach the grave. He described himself as a man whose path is hidden and whom God has hedged around with darkness, sighing before eating while his groans pour out like cascading waters. He confessed that the very catastrophe he feared had overtaken him, lamenting that asking whether he had not dissembled, kept silence and been quiet, yet indignation had come upon him.

The story inside

Initial conditions: Job curses his birth day; the edition separately explains this as expression of misery rather than wishing evil to creation. Development: He asks why he did not die at birth and imagines rest with kings, princes, the weary and those free from oppression. Recorded ending: He asks why life is given to the bitter, describes his sighing and fear, and closes with questions about silence and indignation.

Lessons worth keeping

1
Job curses his birth day; the edition separately explains this as expression of misery rather than wishing evil to creation.
2
He asks why he did not die at birth and imagines rest with kings, princes, the weary and those free from oppression.
3
He asks why life is given to the bitter, describes his sighing and fear, and closes with questions about silence and indignation.

Test your recall

Which concrete sequence does this chapter record, and what remains unstated?

Source edition and notes

Douay–Rheims, revised by Richard Challoner (1749–1752). Project Gutenberg no. 1581. Locators refer to lines in the admitted pg1581.txt edition. Source notes may include Challoner commentary.

Lines 54415–54418
Cursed his day.... Job cursed the day of his birth, not by way of wishing evil to any thing of God’s creation; but only to express in a stronger manner his sense of human miseries in general, and of his own calamities in particular.
Lines 54450–54457
3:13. For now I should have been asleep and still, and should have rest in my sleep: 3:14. With kings and consuls of the earth, who build themselves solitudes: 3:15. Or with princes, that possess gold, and fill their houses with silver:
Lines 54471–54477
3:20. Why is light given to him that is in misery, and life to them that are in bitterness of soul? 3:21. That look for death, and it cometh not, as they that dig for a treasure: 3:22. And they rejoice exceedingly when they have found the grave?