The Complaint of Job.
THE sympathy of his friends day after day, or their silent presence in face of all his troubles, was too much for the long-enduring saint.
After this Job opened his mouth and cursed his day,
And Job answered and said,
Perish the day wherein I was born,
And the night that said, A man is conceived.
That day! be it darkness;
Let not God from above ask after it;
And let not light shine upon it;
Let darkness and death-shade reclaim it;
Let clouds tabernacle on it;
Let darkenings of the day affright it.
That night! thick darkness seize on it;
Let it not be joined to the days of the year;
Let it not come into the number of the months.
Lo, that night! let it be barren;
Let no shout of joy come into it;
Let cursers of days curse it,
Who are prepared to rouse leviathan.
The stars of its twilight be dark;
Let it look for light but [have] none,
And let it not gaze on the eyelids of the dawn;
Because it shut not the doors of my [mother’s] belly
And hid sorrow from mine eyes.
Why did I not die from the womb—
Come forth from the belly, and expire?
Why did the knees anticipate me,
And why the breasts that I should suck?
For now I had lain and been quiet,
I had slept, and then had there been rest for me,
With kings and counsellors of the earth,
Who built ruins for themselves;
Or with princes that had gold,
Who filled their houses with silver;
Or, as a hidden abortion, I should not be,
As infants [that] never saw light:
There the wicked cease from raging,
And there the weary are at rest;
Together rest the prisoners;
They hear not the taskmaster’s voice
Small and great are there the same;
And free the slave from his master.
Wherefore giveth He light to the wretched one,
And life to the bitter [in] soul;
Who long for death, and it [is] not,
And dig for it more than for hid treasures;
Who rejoice to dancing,
Exult when they find the grave?
To a man whose way is hid,
And whom God hath hedged in?
For instead of my bread cometh my sighing,
And like waters are my groans poured forth.
For greatly I feared, and forthwith it overtook me,
And what I dreaded hath come to me;
I was not at ease, I had no quiet
And no rest, and trouble came.”
Thus bitterly does he deprecate the day of his birth and all connected with it. Indeed there had never been child of Adam or a believer so visited as Job; and as yet he knew not the end, that the Lord is exceeding pitiful, and of tender mercy. He was in the depth of his trial aggravated by the silence of his friends, soon to augment it yet more by the drawn swords of their increasingly expressed suspicion. And so he asks, in the anguish of his soul, why, if such was to be his lot living, did he not die from the womb? Why should he have been so tenderly cared for to encounter at length such agony? Why did he not share the quiet of the grave with earth’s grandees, who were spending life in building monuments that decay themselves, or cramming their houses with silver and gold they must leave behind; unless he had been as a still-born babe that never saw light, and thus be where the wicked trouble no more, and the weary are at rest, and the captives repose together, with no taskmaster’s voice, small and great alike there, and the slave free from his master?
The last verses (20-26) put the question, first generally, and then with pointed application to himself, why he should live, being thus miserable. There is no need for giving to verse 20 the impersonal turn of the English Bible and of many others, though there is still the avoidance of uttering the name of God. The full answer could only come in a dead and risen Christ: if it were not so, the most miserable of all men would be the Christian. But now is He risen, and become the first-fruits of them that sleep. Fear of evil is gone forever to him who now walks by faith; for to it evil is gone before God, and nothing but good abides and triumphs in Him whom we know on the throne of God, now appearing in His presence for us. Hence can the Christian glory in tribulations, and die daily; whereas Job can only say that, if he but conceived a fear, it forthwith overtook him, and that which ho dreaded was come upon him; not, I think, referring to past anxieties during his prosperity, but the dismal apprehensions which succeeded each other now that he was passing through the furnace.