Job 3:14

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Whole Bible - Job 3:14

With kings - Reposing as they do. This is the language of calm meditation on what would have been the consequence if he had died when he was an infant. He seems to delight to dwell on it. He contrasts it with his present situation. He pauses on the thought that that would have been an honorable repose. He would have been numbered with kings and princes. Is there not here a little spice of ambition even in his sorrows and humilation? Job had been an eminently rich man; a man greatly honored; an... read more

Joseph Benson

Joseph Benson's Commentary of the Old and New Testaments - Job 3:13-14

Job 3:13-14. For now should I have lain still, and been quiet Free from those torments of body, and that anguish of mind, which now oppress me. With kings and counsellors of the earth I had then been as happy as the proudest monarchs, who, after all their great achievements, go down into their graves; which built desolate places for themselves Who distinguished themselves for a while, and to show their great wealth and power, and to leave behind them a glorious name, and perpetuate... read more

Donald C. Fleming

Bridgeway Bible Commentary - Job 3:1-26

3:1-14:22 FIRST ROUND OF ARGUMENTJob’s bitterness (3:1-26)The long silence breaks when Job curses the day of his birth. He wishes he had never been born (3:1-7). He would like sorcerers also to curse that dark day. If they have power over the mythical sea monster Leviathan, they should have power to declare the day of his birth a day of darkness and sorrow, a day on which no person should have been born (8-10). If he had to be born, he wishes he had been stillborn. Then he would have gone... read more

E.W. Bullinger

E.W. Bullinger's Companion Bible Notes - Job 3:14

desolate places = ruins: i.e. places (tombs or monuments) already going to ruins. read more

Thomas Coke

Thomas Coke Commentary on the Holy Bible - Job 3:14

Job 3:14. Which built desolate places— The Hebrew word חרבות charaboth rendered desolate places, comes from an Arabic root, denoting buildings of the pompous kind; and so may signify apartments of great elegance, or the place where a monarch sits apart from the rest. This, when applied to a dead king, will denote the pompous sepulchral monuments by which monarchs, and other mighty men, in the early ages, endeavoured to preserve their memories, as the pyramids of Egypt, the Mausoleum, and... read more

Robert Jamieson; A. R. Fausset; David Brown

Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible - Job 3:14

14. With kings . . . which built desolate places for themselves—who built up for themselves what proved to be (not palaces, but) ruins! The wounded spirit of Job, once a great emir himself, sick of the vain struggles of mortal great men, after grandeur, contemplates the palaces of kings, now desolate heaps of ruins. His regarding the repose of death the most desirable end of the great ones of earth, wearied with heaping up perishable treasures, marks the irony that breaks out from the black... read more

Thomas Constable

Expository Notes of Dr. Thomas Constable - Job 3:1-26

A. Job’s Personal Lament ch. 3The poetic body to the book begins with a soliloquy in which Job cursed the day of his birth. This introductory soliloquy corresponds to another one Job gave at the end of his dialogue with his three friends (chs. 29-31), especially chapter 31 in which he uttered another curse against himself. These two soliloquies bracket the three cycles of speeches like the covers of a book and bind them together into a unified whole.Evidently the passing of time brought Job no... read more

Thomas Constable

Expository Notes of Dr. Thomas Constable - Job 3:11-19

2. The wish that he had died at birth 3:11-19Another acceptable alternative to Job was that he had been stillborn, miscarried, or died immediately after birth. All the past joys in his life could not compensate for the present misery he felt. The rest of death was better than the turmoil of life for him now that he was suffering. read more

John Dummelow

John Dummelow's Commentary on the Bible - Job 3:1-26

Job Curses his DayJob curses the day of his birth. He asks why he did not die at birth: why should his wretched life be prolonged?We are now confronted with a striking change in Job’s frame of mind from that presented in Job 2:10. Probably a considerable interval had elapsed before his friends arrived. He complains in the speeches which follow of the emaciated state into which he had fallen, and that from being the honoured of all he had become a byword to his neighbours: cp. Job 1:3; Job... read more

Charles John Ellicott

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers - Job 3:14

(14) Desolate places—i.e., gorgeous tombs and splendid sepulchres, which, being tenanted only by the dead, are desolate; or it may mean that the places so built of old are now ruined and desolate. In the former sense it is possible that the Pyramids may here be hinted at. read more