Job 3:1

THE LAMENTATION.

1. After this With the close of the Historical Introduction, Satan, as an open actor, disappears from the scene; the supernatural passes into abeyance; and we are for awhile left alone with Job, notwithstanding his friends still sit by in formal etiquette, and with professional sympathy. Faith has been triumphant in every conflict, and the very language of the original, and of our own beautiful English version, seems to partake of the spirit prevailing around the calmness and serenity of the victory towards which all had tended. We are as little prepared for the impending violent outburst of grief and despair, as Job was for the storm that destroyed his family and home. A dyke may for a long time hold the vast volumes of a flood in check, only to make the devastation the more disastrous when once it breaks away. Such is the flood, long kept back by the power of faith, that now bursts forth. We are borne along amid the wreck of broken thoughts, struggling images, and impassioned cries. It is the one lamentation of all literature overwhelming us with its awfulness, and leading us to grasp the rock that is higher than we.

The question naturally arises as to the immediate cause for Job’s so sudden precipitation from the assured heights of trust and resignation into the yawning depths of despair. However sincere the friends may have been at the outset of their ministrations, they somewhere failed in these, and dashed the cup of consolation with lees of bitterness. Their breedings over his peculiar afflictions must in some way have betrayed themselves to the keen eyes of Job. (See notes on Job 3:2; Job 6:14.) The failure of the friends was the failure of Job’s last earthly hope. The strained “back” of the sufferer was not equal to this, “the last straw” of grief. His cursing of every phase of existence proclaims that nothing now remains to Job but his grave and his God. The lamentation divides itself, according to Hahn, into, first, a wild cursing of life. which has brought his calamity; Job 3:3-10. Second, an ardent desire for death, to bring him rest; Job 3:11-19. Third, reproachful questioning of life, if indeed it must bring sorrow; Job 3:20-26.

Job opened his mouth A formula used when a speech of more than usual gravity is expected.

And cursed his day His birthday. (Job 3:3; Hosea 7:5.) He does not curse God. The issue made by Satan was, that he would “curse” ( renounce) “God.” The word here used is קלל , to speak ill, or make light of. Gesenius. (See note on barak, to curse, or renounce, Job 1:5.) “Job’s cursing the day may be viewed as simply an Oriental glowering over his misery, stopping at the second causes, and never dreaming of impeaching the divine First Cause. A logician might tell him that his words implicated the First Cause, and but for his paroxysm of woe he would be responsible; but he thinks no such implication. After the human probationary measure he is innocent still “perfect;” but tried by the absolute, as he soon will be, he is guilty.” Compare with this lament the more brief and polished, but less impressive, one of Jeremiah, (Jeremiah 20:14-18,) which of all Scriptures more nearly approaches the solemnly majestic and tragic wail of Job; and while “ that of Jeremiah is milder, softer, and more plaintive, peculiarly calculated to excite pity,” (LOWTH, Hebrews Poet.,) it is evidently modelled after this, the vastly older pattern. In this we are painfully affected by the intense subjectiveness of the protracted outcry which, better than any descriptive language, discloses the great deep of Job’s misery. Dean Swift, at the height of his glory, upon the return of his birthday, was wont to “lament it” by repeating this chapter. ROSCOE’S Life of Swift.