World English Bible
- After this Job opened his mouth, and cursed the day of his birth.
- Job answered:
- “Let the day perish in which I was born, the night which said, ‘There is a boy conceived.’
- Let that day be darkness. Don’t let God from above seek for it, neither let the light shine on it.
- Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it for their own. Let a cloud dwell on it. Let all that makes the day black terrify it.
- As 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.
- Behold, let that night be barren. Let no joyful voice come therein.
- Let them curse it who curse the day, who are ready to rouse up leviathan.
- Let the stars of its twilight be dark. Let it look for light, but have none, neither let it see the eyelids of the morning,
- because it didn’t shut up the doors of my mother’s womb, nor did it hide trouble from my eyes.
- “Why didn’t I die from the womb? Why didn’t I give up the spirit when my mother bore me?
- Why did the knees receive me? Or why the breast, that I should nurse?
- For now I should have lain down and been quiet. I should have slept, then I would have been at rest,
- with kings and counselors of the earth, who built up waste places for themselves;
- or with princes who had gold, who filled their houses with silver;
- or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been, as infants who never saw light.
- There the wicked cease from troubling. There the weary are at rest.
- There the prisoners are at ease together. They don’t hear the voice of the taskmaster.
- The small and the great are there. The servant is free from his master.
- “Why is light given to him who is in misery, life to the bitter in soul,
- who long for death, but it doesn’t come; and dig for it more than for hidden treasures,
- who rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, when they can find the grave?
- Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in?
- For my sighing comes before I eat. My groanings are poured out like water.
- For the thing which I fear comes on me, that which I am afraid of comes to me.
- I am not at ease, neither am I quiet, neither do I have rest; but trouble comes.”
“Why is light given to him who is in misery?” (English Standard Version). After seven days of holy silence (yesterday’s ash-heap still in view), Job finally speaks—and he does not curse God; he curses his day. The Hebrew verb shifts: earlier, “bless” (barak) was used ironically by the Accuser; here, Job “curses” (qillel) his birthdate. His faith is wounded, not abandoned.
Job’s lament is artistry and theology. He calls for “un-creation”: “Let that day be darkness; let not God seek it” (English Standard Version). This deliberately inverts Genesis 1’s “Let there be light.” In 3:8, he invokes those “ready to rouse Leviathan” (liwyatan)—a nod to ancient Near Eastern imagery of the chaos-dragon. In the ancient world, experts could pronounce days “ill-omened”; Job longs to erase his own day from the calendar of creation. Archaeology and texts from Mesopotamia attest to such “days of fate,” giving cultural texture to his wish.
Three times he asks, “Why is light given…?”—a refrain that dignifies honest questions. He imagines Sheol as a great leveling: there “the small and the great are there,” and “the wicked cease from troubling” (English Standard Version). This is not nihilism but protest borne from covenant hope: if God orders the world, why does suffering feel so disordering?
Gregory the Great read Job’s anguish as God’s schooling of the righteous; Augustine warns against despair yet allows groaning; Luther and Calvin commend Job’s raw speech as the grammar of a cross-shaped faith. Scripture agrees: Jeremiah 20 echoes Job’s birth-curse; Psalm 88 leaves the amen unspoken; the Man of Sorrows cries Psalm 22 at noon-darkness. Lament is not a lapse in faith—it is faith refusing to lie.
Suggested cross-references: - Genesis 1; Jeremiah 20:14–18; Psalm 88; Psalm 22 - Isaiah 27:1 (Leviathan); Romans 8:22–26; Hebrews 4:15
Hymn for meditation: “Dear Refuge of My Weary Soul” (Anne Steele).
Prayer: Lord of light who entered our darkness, receive our unvarnished words. Teach us to grieve without guile, to ask “Why?” without walking away. Order our chaos, restrain the dragon, and grant rest to the weary. Through Jesus Christ, who cried and trusted. Amen.