Job 3

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¹After this Job opened his mouth, and cursed the day of his birth. ✦ ²Job answered: ✦ ³“Let the day perish in which I was born, the night which said, ‘There is a boy conceived.’ ✦ ⁴Let that day be darkness. Don’t let God from above seek for it, neither let the light shine on it. ✦ ⁵Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it for their own. Let a cloud dwell on it. Let all that makes black the day terrify it. ✦ ⁶As for that night, let thick darkness seize on it. Let it not rejoice among the days of the year. Let it not come into the number of the months. ⁷Behold, let that night be barren. Let no joyful voice come therein. ✦ ⁸Let them curse it who curse the day, who are ready to rouse up leviathan. ✦ ⁹Let the stars of its twilight be dark. Let it look for light, but have none, neither let it see the eyelids of the morning, ✦ ¹⁰because it didn’t shut up the doors of my mother’s womb, nor did it hide trouble from my eyes. ✦ ¹¹“Why didn’t I die from the womb? Why didn’t I give up the spirit when my mother bore me? ✦ ¹²Why did the knees receive me? Or why the breast, that I should nurse? ✦ ¹³For now should I have lain down and been quiet. I should have slept, then I would have been at rest, ✦ ¹⁴with kings and counselors of the earth, who built up waste places for themselves; ✦ ¹⁵or with princes who had gold, who filled their houses with silver: ✦ ¹⁶or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been, as infants who never saw light. ✦ ¹⁷There the wicked cease from troubling. There the weary are at rest. ✦ ¹⁸There the prisoners are at ease together. They don’t hear the voice of the taskmaster. ✦ ¹⁹The small and the great are there. The servant is free from his master. ✦ ²⁰“Why is light given to him who is in misery, life to the bitter in soul, ✦ ²¹Who long for death, but it doesn’t come; and dig for it more than for hidden treasures, ✦ ²²who rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, when they can find the grave? ²³Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in? ✦ ²⁴For my sighing comes before I eat. My groanings are poured out like water. ✦ ²⁵For the thing which I fear comes on me, That which I am afraid of comes to me. ✦ ²⁶I am not at ease, neither am I quiet, neither have I rest; but trouble comes.” ✦

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Where this chapter connects

Job 10 ·6 Ps 49 ·5 Job 7 ·5 Job 41 ·4 Job 19 ·4 Job 30 ·4 Jer 20 ·4 Job 1 ·3

Christ at the center

Job's cry for a mediator who can lay his hand on both God and man, and his confidence that 'my Redeemer lives' and will stand on the earth, reaches forward to Jesus the living Redeemer.

How Job 3 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.

Resources, by level

Lay

★ Start hereAudioThrough the WordThrough the Word · ~10 min/chapter · Free · evangelical
A clear ~10-minute audio teaching for every one of the Bible's 1,189 chapters — the most systematic free way to study chapter by chapter.

Pastoral

SermonChuck Smith — C2000 SeriesChuck Smith · Free · evangelical
Free verse-by-verse audio through the entire Bible from the founder of Calvary Chapel.

Commentaries & study tools

VideoBibleProject — Job videosBibleProject · Lay · Free · evangelical
Free animated overview and word-study videos for this book.
VideoWatch teaching on Job 3YouTube · Lay · Free
Sermons and chapter teaching from across YouTube.
CommentaryEnduring Word — Job 3David Guzik · Lay · Free · evangelical
Readable, verse-by-verse exposition of the whole chapter.
CommentaryMatthew Henry on JobMatthew Henry · Pastoral · Free · evangelical
The beloved Puritan exposition of this whole book — warm, devotional, and verse by verse (free, CCEL).
ReferenceBlue Letter Bible — Job 3Blue Letter Bible · Seminary · Free
Interlinear, lexicon, and study tools across the chapter.

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