Chapter 3

2023 - My ESV (NASB95 does also) switches to "prose" format instead of just regular text, as if the speeches of Job and Eliphaz in the next chapter have some kind of meter or rhyme in the original language.  But you'd have to know a lot more Hebrew than I do to pull it out.  I bet it's there though, and I bet if you read Hebrew or see an early Hebrew text of Job, it would be pretty obvious that it is not just random words, but is put together more like an epic poem or some such.

Job speaks first:

"Let the day perish on which I was born, and the night that said, 'A man is conceived.'

Job 3:3 ESV

Job considers the beginning of his life to be the night of his conception.  Not the day he was born.  We don't see this verse used as evidence against abortion very often, we just see the "from my mother's womb" stuff.

Possible FB post 2023.

2021 - Not as sure about the meaning as I was last time.  If these mean the same thing, I suspect they both mean birth, not both conception.  More likely he is cursing both times, which still means that he considers his life to have begun at conception.  I think it is also interesting that it is ok - it is not sin - to curse being born at all.  What is not ok is blaming God for your troubles.  MSB note on vs 1 seems to say he's talking about both.  It also says there that Job's feeling is that it would have been better never to live and have the joys of life that he's had than to suffer as he is suffering.  Better never to have had wealth than to have it and lose it, better never to have had children at all than to have them and lose them.

Job wishes he'd never been born, or that he'd died immediately. In 1-10 he curses the night of his conception and the day of his birth.  He wishes that day had been cursed, dark, and awful, so that he would not have been conceived or born. 

Beginning in 11, he turns his attention to himself, from birth on.  Job wishes he'd been born dead, or left to die in some way.  Note what all he tells us about an infant who dies.  They join kings and princes in their rest, where those abused by mankind have some peace at last.  This is not a description of hell and punishment, but a place of quiet and peace and rest in death. 

2021 - In vs. 17 it also says the wicked cease from troubling there.  Interlinear suggests that "raging" might be better than "troubling".  The wicked cease their raging, so they calm down, their evil designs cease.  We know from the rich man and Lazarus that the wicked go straight to hell.  It's not like Sheol was a place of peace for everyone until after Jesus rose.  Hell was always immediate.  So Job must mean here that once you're on fire, at least the cares and motivations or maybe obligations and responsibilities of life are gone. 

This verse:

21 who long for death, but it comes not, and dig for it more than for hidden treasures, [Job 3:21 ESV]

And this one right after:

Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in?

Job 3:23 ESV

Surely no one has ever been more miserable than Job.  He longs to die, but he will not bring it about by his own hand.  If this is not "justification" for suicide, then nothing ever can be.  Satan has had a free hand to do his worst to Job, and yet Job waits for God to relieve him of his suffering, rather than to take care of it himself.

God is only mentioned in vs 23.  Seems to imply that despite everything that has happened to his possessions, his family, and his health, Job recognizes that he is still protected from death, there is still some hedge.  Job seems to want it removed so he can die.