“Or like a miscarriage which is hidden, I would not exist, As infants that never saw light.
Parallel translations
- WEB or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been, as infants who never saw light.
- KJV Or as an hidden untimely birth I had not been; as infants which never saw light.
- BSB Or why was I not hidden like a stillborn child, like an infant who never sees daylight?
- NKJV Or why was I not hidden like a stillborn child, Like infants who never saw light?
- NLT Why wasn’t I buried like a stillborn child, like a baby who never lives to see the light?
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Job wishes he had been a stillborn child who never saw light. He longs to have skipped life and its pain altogether.
Overview
Comparing himself to a hidden, untimely birth, Job wishes he had passed straight from non-existence to the grave. The imagery of infants who never saw light measures the weight of his despair. Such lament voices real anguish, yet the book will not leave Job, or the reader, without hope.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 3
- Ps 58:8Let them be like a snail which melts and passes away, like the stillborn child, who has not seen the sun.
- Eccl 6:3If a man fathers a hundred children, and lives many years, so that the days of his years are many, but his soul is not filled with good, and moreover he has no burial; I say, that a stillborn child is better than he:
- 1 Cor 15:8and last of all, as to the child born at the wrong time, he appeared to me also.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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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 3:16 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.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.