Job 3:2

Spake. Heb. ‘anah, generally translated “to answer.” Here it means “to respond to an occasion,” “to speak in view of circumstances” (see Deut. 26:5; Isa. 14:10; Zech. 3:4). This verse ends the prose introduction to the book of Job.

Spake. Hebrew ‘anah, generally translated “to answer.” Here it means “to respond to an occasion,” “to speak in view of circumstances” (see Deuteronomy 26:5; Isaiah 14:10; Zechariah 3:4). This verse ends the prose introduction to the book of Job.

Job 3:3-26

Chapter 3:3-26 presents the first poem. It is divided into three stanzas, verses 3-10; 11-19; and 20-26. In the first stanza Job curses the day of his birth and the night of his conception. In the second he expresses the wish that he had died before birth. The third stanza asks the question, Why does God compel men to live when they would rather die? His execrations are solemn, deep, and sublime. These poetic statements do not lend themselves to minute technical analysis. Job is not presenting logic. Rather, he is pouring out the impassioned feelings of a suffering soul.

Let the day perish. A poetic way of saying, “I wish I had never been born.” “Day” is here personified.

The night. “Night” is also personified. A simpler rendering would be “the night which said” (see RSV).

Man child. Hebrew geber, “a man,” emphasized as being strong, distinguished from women and children. It is not the ordinary word to designate the male sex, which would be zakar. Geber is here poetically employed. As the announcement of the conception is made by the personified “night,” so the individual who was conceived is considered, not in the ordinary sense of a child, but as the man Job eventually was to become. The LXX makes the night that of Job’s birth rather than that of his conception. The reason is presumably to avoid the difficulty of announcing the sex of the child on the night of conception. However, by poetic fancy such knowledge is here ascribed to the night.