Job 3:16

16 Why wasn't I stillborn and buried with all the babies who never saw light,

Job 3:16 Meaning and Commentary

Job 3:16

Or as an hidden untimely birth
Or "hid, as one born out of time", as Mr. Broughton reads it; the Septuagint use the same word as the apostle does, when he says the like of himself, ( 1 Corinthians 15:8 ) ; the word has the signification of "falling" F19, and designs an abortive, which is like to fruit that falls from the tree before it is ripe; and this may be said to be "hidden", either in the belly, as the Targum, or however from the sight of man, it being not come to any proper shape, and much less perfection; now Job suggests, that if he had not lain with kings, counsellors, and princes, yet at least he should have been as an abortion, and that would have been as well to him: then

I had not been;
or should have been nothing, not reckoned anything; should not have been numbered among beings, but accounted as a nonentity, and should have had no subsistence or standing in the world at all:

as infants [which] never saw light;
and if not like an untimely birth, which is not come to any perfection, yet should have been like infants, which, though their mothers have gone their full time with them, and they have all their limbs in perfection and proportion, yet are dead, or stillborn, their eyes have never been opened to see any light; meaning not the light of the law, as the Targum, but the light of the sun, or the light of the world, see ( Ecclesiastes 6:3-5 ) ; infants used to be buried in the wells or caves of the mummies F20.


FOOTNOTES:

F19 (lpgk) "sicut abortivus qui ex utero excidit, aut in terram cadit", Michaelis.
F20 Vansleb, ut supra, (Relation of a Voyage to Egypt,) p. 90.

Job 3:16 In-Context

14 In the company of kings and statesmen in their royal ruins,
15 Or with princes resplendent in their gold and silver tombs.
16 Why wasn't I stillborn and buried with all the babies who never saw light,
17 Where the wicked no longer trouble anyone and bone-weary people get a long-deserved rest?
18 Prisoners sleep undisturbed, never again to wake up to the bark of the guards.
Published by permission. Originally published by NavPress in English as THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright 2002 by Eugene Peterson. All rights reserved.