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Job Curses the day of His Birth.
Up till now Job had suppressed all thoughts of rebellion against God, every notion of dissatisfaction and impatience with the ways of Jehovah. But now he gives evidence of weakness.
v. 1. After this opened Job his mouth, in the formal manner, with deliberation and gravity, after the custom of the ancient sages, and cursed his day, namely, the day of his birth.
v. 2. And Job spake and said, in a wild and bold outburst, which showed that he was impatient with the afflictions laid upon him by God, Cf Jer_20:14,
v. 3. Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man-child conceived, rather, "the night which said," for that night is personified as the witness and messenger of evil.
v. 4. Let that day be darkness, be covered with the everlasting shadows of death; let not God regard it from above, in any way inquire after it, as though interested in such an execrable time, neither let the light shine upon it, it should be shut out forever from the light of God's presence.
v. 5. Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it, the thickest darkness, the deepest death-gloom reclaiming and covering it as an unclean thing; let a cloud dwell upon it, encamping over it, obscuring and hiding it forever; let the blackness of the day terrify it, the thought being that, just as a day seems all the gloomier and more dismal after it has once been lit up by a flash of light, so the dismal bitterness of darkness should settle upon the day of his birth as a form of retribution for permitting his being born.
v. 6. As for that night, let darkness seize upon it, everlasting darkness holding it in its possession; let it not be joined unto the days of the year, rather, "let it not be glad of its existence among the days of the year," as one of a joyful troop of nights which march by in glittering procession; let it not come into the number of the months, it should be omitted and forgotten, as utterly detestable.
v. 7. Lo, let that night be solitary, or, more forceful, "See, that night!" Let it be barren, and therefore utterly desolate, without a cheering voice; let no joyful voice come therein, not a single jubilant shout as over the happy birth of a welcome child.
v. 8. Let them curse it that curse the day, the sorcerers of old, whose ban was thought to bewitch a day so as to make it a day of misfortune, who are ready to raise up their mourning, literally, "those who are skilful in rousing up leviathan," the great dragon of whom the ancients believed that he devoured the sun and the moon at the time of eclipses, whom the heathen sorcerers tried to drive away with their incantations. All the men who had influence over the powers of evil should join in cursing the night of Job's conception.
v. 9. Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark, refusing to be the heralds of the dawn and thereby continuing the darkness; let it look for light, but have none, condemned to the everlasting curse of darkness; neither let it see the dawning of the day, literally, "the eyelashes of the dawn," by which it might be refreshed and filled with pleasure;
v. 10. because it shut not up the doors of my mother's womb, thus hindering his being conceived and born, nor hid sorrow from mine eyes, for if he had never been born, he would not now have been afflicted with this suffering. It was an impatient outburst which, although not directed at God outright, yet had the effect of a challenge of His providence and government of the world, and therefore was just as objectionable as similar outbursts on the part of believers today.