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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Job 3:3 - 3:3
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3 Perish the day wherein I was born.
And the night which said, A man-child is conceived!
4 Let that day become darkness;
Let not Eloah ask after it from above,
And let not the light shine on it.
5 May darkness and the shadow of death purchase it back;
Let a cloud lie upon it;
May that which obscures the day terrify it.
The curse is against the day of his birth and the night of his conception as recurring yearly, not against the actual first day (Schlottm.), to which the imprecations which follow are not pertinent. Job wishes his birth-day may become dies ater, swallowed up by darkness as into nothing. The elliptical relative clauses, Job 3:3 (Ges. §123, 3; cf. 127, 4, c), become clear from the translation. Transl. the night (לַֽיְלָה with parag. He is masc.) which said, not: in which they said; the night alone was witness of this beginning of the development of a man-child, and made report of it to the High One, to whom it is subordinate. Day emerges from the darkness as Eloah from above (as Job 31:2, Job 31:28), i.e., He who reigns over the changes here below, asks after it; interests Himself in His own (דָּרַשׁ). Job wishes his birth-day may not rejoice in this. The relations of this his birth-day are darkness and the shadow of death. These are to redeem it, as, according to the right of kinsmen, family property is redeemed when it has got into a stranger's hands. This is the meaning of גָּאַל (lxx ἐκλάβοι), not = גָּעַל, inquinent (Targ.). עֲנָנָה is collective, as נְהָרָה, mass of cloud. Instead of כִּמְרִירֵי (the Caph of which seems pointed as praepos), we must read with Ewald (§157, a), Olshausen, (§187, b), and others, כַּמְרִירֵי, after the form חַכְלִיל, darkness, dark flashing (vid., on Psa 10:8), שַׁפְרִיר, tapestry, unless we are willing to accept a form of noun without example elsewhere. The word signifies an obscuring, from כָּמֵר, to glow with heat, because the greater the glow the deeper the blackness it leaves behind. All that ever obscures a day is to overtake and render terrible that day.
(Note: We may compare here, and further, on, Constance's outburst of despair in King John (3:1 and 3:4). Shakespeare, like Goethe, enriches himself from the book of Job.)