Job 3:12-22

12 Why did knees welcome me? Why did breasts let me nurse?
13 Instead of being alive, I would now be quietly lying down. I would now be sleeping peacefully.
14 I would be with the kings and the counselors of the world who built for themselves [what are now] ruins.
15 I would be with princes who had gold, who filled their homes with silver.
16 I would be buried like a stillborn baby. I would not exist. I would be like infants who never saw the light.
17 There the wicked stop their raging. There the weary are able to rest.
18 There the captives have no troubles at all. There they do not hear the shouting of the slave driver.
19 There [you find] both the unimportant and important people. There the slave is free from his master.
20 "Why give light to one in misery and life to those who find it so bitter,
21 to those who long for death but it never comes-- though they dig for it more than for buried treasure?
22 They are ecstatic, delighted to find the grave.

Job 3:12-22 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO JOB 3

In this chapter we have an account of Job's cursing the day of his birth, and the night of his conception; Job 3:1-3; first the day, to which he wishes the most extreme darkness, Job 3:4,5; then the night, to which he wishes the same and that it might be destitute of all joy, and be cursed by others as well as by himself, Job 3:6-9; The reasons follow, because it did not prevent his coming into the world, and because he died not on it, Job 3:10-12; which would, as he judged, have been an happiness to him; and this he illustrates by the still and quiet state of the dead, the company they are with, and their freedom from all trouble, oppression, and bondage, Job 3:13-19; but however, since it was otherwise with him, he desires his life might not be prolonged, and expostulates about the continuance of it, Job 3:20-23; and this by reason of his present troubles, which were many and great, and came upon him as he feared they would, and which had made him uneasy in his prosperity, Job 3:24-26.

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