Job Regrets His Birth Job 3

Job3:3 "Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man child conceived."

After seven days of sitting in ashes and scraping his boils with his friends watching and saying nothing, Job finally speaks. His words come from the heart of a man who has seen his life ripped away and only his breath remains.

v9 "Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark; let it look for light, but have none; neither let it see the dawning of the day."

v13 "For now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept; then had I been at rest."

Job goes over all the possibilities that would void the day he was born. He wishes he had been born dead. He wishes the day he was born was omitted. He wishes there was no cause for rejoicing on that day.

v7 Lo, let that night be solitary, let no joyful voice come therein."

He compares his child death and subsequent rest to the rest of prisoners and such which he would gladly share.

v18 "There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor."

Then Job wonders at the mystery of life itself. He hints at the things man does not know but only God knows.

v23 "Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged in?"

Then in verse 25 he makes a confession concerning his hidden fear.

v25 "For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me."

It appears to me that Job suffers deep depression along with his physical sickness. Being sick can make a person very depressed. Looking back on illness can make one wonder why they were depressed at all, but during the sickness and a time of loss, when the end is not in sight, depression can take hold and pull you down. I have experienced that black hole with its slippery walls like an old well long forgotten by everyone. But I know God's grace is sufficient. We often have to look at what God has done in the past to understand what he will do in our present situation.

v26 "I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet; yet trouble came."

Job was a man of renown and a teacher of many. He was perhaps one of those people who people would say about 'See how Job did it and look at his success'. Yet now in his trouble, his friends do not console him. Their words must have been like knives. In the next chapter.

Psalm 5:7 "But as for me, I will come into thy house in the multitude of thy mercy: and in thy fear will I worship toward thy holy temple."

Job is sorry he was born.