Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Job 10:18
Wherefore then hast thou brought me forth out of the womb? Oh that I had given up the ghost, and no eye had seen me!
18, 19. Perplexed even to despair by this idea of the purpose of God Job asks, Why God ever gave him existence at all? and as in ch. Job 3:11 seq. wishes he had never seen life.
hast thou brought ] didst thou bring.
Oh that I had given ] I should have given.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Wherefore then hast thou brought me forth – See the notes at Job 3:11.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Job 10:18-22
Oh that I had given up the ghost!
The effects of Jobs sufferings
The patriarch had already in the previous verses expressed to the Almighty that his sufferings were–
(1) Too great to render any efforts at self-consolation effective,
(2) Too deserved to justify any hope of relief,
(3) Too overwhelming to check the expression of his complaint, and now as
(4) Too crushing to give to existence anything but an intolerable curse, His sufferings, judging from his language here, had destroyed within him for a time three of the primary instincts of the soul.
I. A sense of duty. Sense of obligation to the Supreme is an instinct as universal as man, as deep as life itself; but the patriarch, in wishing that he had never been, or that his first breath had been extinguished, had lost all feeling in relation to the wonderful mercies which his Creator had conferred upon him during the past years of his existence.
What were those mercies?
1. Great material wealth.
2. Great domestic enjoyment.
3. Immense social influence.
II. A love of life. Seldom do we find, even amongst the most miserable of men, one who struggles not to perpetuate his existence. But this instinct Job now seems to have lost, if not its existence, its power. Existence has become so intolerable that he wishes he had never had it, and yearns for annihilation. Two thoughts are here suggested.
1. There may be something worse for man than annihilation.
2. This annihilation is beyond the reach of creatures.
III. Hope of a hereafter. Hope for future good is another of the strongest instincts of our nature. Thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mothers breasts. Indeed it is one of those powers within us that, like a mainspring, keeps every wheel in action. Man never is but always to be blest. Job seems to have lost this now. Hence his description of the future. Before I go whence I shall not return, even to the land of darkness, and the shadow of death; a land of darkness, as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as darkness. He saw a future, but what was it?
1. Darkness. A starless, moonless midnight, a vast immeasurable abyss–the land of darkness. His hereafter was black, not a ray of light streamed from the firmament.
2. Confusion. Without any order. Small and great, young and old, all together in black chaos.
Conclusion–
1. That great suffering in this world in the case of individuals does not mean great sin.
2. The power of the devil over man.
3. The value of the Gospel. This man had no clear revelation of a blessed future. Hence one scarcely wonders at his frequent and impassioned complaints. How different our life to his! (Homilist.)
A good mans distempers
This passage teaches–
1. Saints highest fits of passion will not last, but mercy will reclaim them, and give them a cool of that fever.
2. As the fevers and distempers of saints may come to a very great height, so, ordinarily, that height or excess of them proves the step next to their cool.
3. Humble, sober prayer is a notable evidence and mean in calming distempered spirits; it is as the shower to allay that poisonous wind.
4. As mans life is but uncertain and short, so the thoughts of this should make men employ their time well, and to be very needy and pressing after God, and proofs of Him.
5. Such as are excited with much trouble, and have their exercises blessed to them, will be sober, and esteem much of little ease, to get leave to breathe, or to comfort and refresh themselves a little, with a sight of God, or of His grace in them, and not their own passions which they ought to abhor.
6. The least ease, breathing, or comfort, under trouble, cannot be had but of Gods indulgence.
7. It is the duty of men to acquaint themselves with death beforehand; and especially in times of trouble they should study it in its true colours.
8. Death and the grave in themselves, and when Christs victory over them is not studied, and men are hurried away to them in a tempest of trouble, are very terrible, and an ugly sight, as bringing an irreparable loss as to any restitution in this life.
9. The consideration of the ugliness of death and the grave, doth call upon all to provide somewhat before they lie down in that cold bed, wherein they will continue so long, and somewhat that may light them through that dark passage. (George Hutcheson.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 18. Wherefore then] Why didst thou give me a being, when thou didst foresee I should be exposed to such incredible hardships? See on Job 3:10, &c.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
To wit, alive, i.e. that I had never been born alive.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
Wherefore then hast thou brought me forth out of the womb?…. Into this world; this act is rightly ascribed by Job to the Lord, as it is by David, Ps 22:9; which kind act of God Job complains of, and wishes it had never been, seeing his life was now so miserable and uncomfortable; here he returns to his former complaints, wishes, and expostulations, expressed with so much vehemence and passion in
Job 10:3; and for which his friends blamed him, and endeavoured to convince him of his error in so doing; but it does not appear that their arguments carried any force in them with him, or had any effect upon him; he still continues in the same mind, and by repeating justifies what he had said; and thought he had sufficient reason to wish he had never been born, that he had died in the womb, since his afflictions were so very great and increasing, and since God pursued him as a fierce lion; and, according to his sense of things, his indignation against him appeared more and more, and his life was a continued succession of trouble and distress:
and that I had given up the ghost; that is, in the womb, and had never been brought out of it, at least alive; or it may be rendered not as a wish, but as an affirmation, “I should have given up the ghost”; or, “so or then I should have expired” e; if such care had not been taken of me, if God had not been so officious to me as to take me out of my mother’s womb at the proper time, I should have died in it, and that would have been my grave; and which would have been more eligible than to come into the world, and live such a miserable life as I now live:
and no eye had seen me! no eye would have seen him, had he not been taken out of the womb; or however if he had died directly, would not have seen him alive; and an abortive or stillborn child few see, or care to see; and had he been such an one, he had never been seen in the circumstances he now was; and by this he suggests, that he was now such a shocking sight as was not fit to be seen by men, and which would have been prevented had he died in the womb.
e “expirabo”, Montanus; “expirassem”, Mercerus, Cocceius, Schmidt, Schultens.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
18 And wherefore hast Thou brought me forth out of the womb?
I should have expired, that no eye had seen me,
19 I should have been as though I had never been,
Carried from the womb to the grave.
20 Are not my days few? then cease
And turn from me, that I may become a little cheerful,
21 Before I go to return no more
Into the land of darkness and of the shadow of death,
22 The land of deep darkness like to midnight,
Of the shadow of death and of confusion,
And which is bright like midnight.
The question Wherefore? Job 10:18, is followed by futt. as modi conditionales (Ges. 127, 5) of that which would and should have happened, if God had not permitted him to be born alive: I should have expired, prop. I ought to have expired, being put back to the time of birth (comp. Job 3:13, where the praet. more objectively expressed what would then have happened). These modi condit . are continued in Job 10:19: I should have been (sc. in the womb) as though I had not been (comp. the short elliptical
(Note: is there = , like , Isa 65:1 = [ vid. Ges. 123, 3], and is used as a conjunction as little as (vid., on Psa 38:14).)
expression, Oba 1:16), i.e., as one who had scarcely entered upon existence, and that only of the earliest (as at conception); I should have been carried ( , as Job 21:32) from the womb (without seeing the light as one born alive) to the grave. This detestation of his existence passes into the wish, Job 10:20, that God would be pleased at least somewhat to relieve him ere he is swallowed up by the night of Hades. We must neither with the Targ. translate: are not my days few, and vanishing away? nor with Oetinger: will not my fewness of days cease? Both are contrary to the correct accentuation. Olshausen thinks it remarkable that there is not a weaker pausal accent to ; but such a one is really indirectly there, for Munach is here equivalent to Dech, from which it is formed (vid., the rule in Comm. ber den Psalter, ii. 504). Accordingly, Seb. Schmid correctly translates: nonne parum dies mei? ideo cessa. The Keri substitutes the precative form of expression for the optative: cease then, turn away from me then ( imper. consec. with waw of the result, Ewald, 235, a); comp. the precative conclusion to the speech, Job 7:16., but there is no real reason for changing the optative form of the text. (voluntative for , Job 9:33) may be supplemented by , , , , or (Job 7:17) (not, however, with Hirz., , after Job 9:34, which is too far-fetched for the usage of the language, or with Bttch., , copias suas ); can however, like , Job 4:20, signify to turn one’s self to, se disponere = to attend to, consequently , to turn the attention from, as , Job 7:19, Ps. 39:14 (where, as here, follows).
He desires a momentary alleviation of his sufferings and ease before his descent to Hades, which seems so near at hand. He calls Hades the land of darkness and of the shadow of death. , which occurs for the first time in the Old Testament in Psa 23:4, is made into a compound from , and is the proper word for the obscurity of the region of the dead, and is accordingly repeated later on. Further, he calls it the land of encircling darkness ( , defective for , from , caligare , and with He parag. intensive for , in Amo 4:13, who also uses , Job 5:9, in common with Job), like midnight darkness. cannot mean merely the grey of twilight, it is the entire absence of sunlight, Job 3:6; Job 28:3; Psa 91:6; comp. ex. Job 10:22, where the Egyptian darkness is called . Bttch. correctly compares and : mersa ad imum h.e. profunda nox (the advancing night). Still further he calls it (the land) of the shadow of death, and devoid of order ( , . . in the Old Testament, but a common word in the later Hebrew), i.e., where everything is so encompassed by the shadow of death that it seems a chaos, without any visible or distinct outline. It is difficult to determine whether is to be referred to : and which lights ( fut. consec. as the accent on the penult . indicates, the syntax like Job 3:21, Job 3:23; Isa 57:3); or is to be taken as neuter: and it shines there (= and where it shines) like midnight darkness. Since (from = , to rise, shine forth; vid., on Psa 95:4), as also , does not occur elsewhere as neuter, we prefer, with Hirzel, to refer it to ot , as being more certain. Moreover, is here evidently the intensest darkness, ipsum medullitium umbrae mortis ejusque intensissimum , as Oetinger expresses it. That which is there called light, i.e., the faintest degree of darkness, is like the midnight of this world; “not light, but darkness visible,” as Milton says of hell.
The maxim of the friends is: God does not pervert right, i.e., He deals justly in all that He does. They conclude from this, that no man, no sufferer, dare justify himself: it is his duty to humble himself under the just hand of God. Job assents to all this, but his assent is mere sarcasm at what they say. He admits that everything that God does is right, and must be acknowledged as right; not, however, because it is right in itself, but because it is the act of the absolute God, against whom no protest uttered by the creature, though with the clearest conviction of innocence, can avail. Job separates goodness from God, and regards that which is part of His very being as a produce of His arbitrary will. What God says and does must be true and right, even if it be not true and right in itself. The God represented by the friends is a God of absolute justice; the God of Job is a God of absolute power. The former deals according to the objective rule of right; the latter according to a freedom which, because removed from all moral restraint, is pure caprice.
How is it that Job entertains such a cheerless view of the matter? The friends, by the strong view which they have taken up, urge him into another extreme. On their part, they imagine that in the justice of God they have a principle which is sufficient to account for all the misfortunes of mankind, and Job’s in particular. They maintain, with respect to mankind in general (Eliphaz by an example from his own observation, and Bildad by calling to his aid the wisdom of the ancients), that the ungodly, though prosperous for a time, come to a fearful end; with respect to Job, that his affliction is a just chastisement from God, although designed for his good. Against the one assertion Job’s own experience of life rebels; against the other his consciousness rises up with indignation. Job’s observation is really as correct as that of the friends; for the history of the past and of the present furnishes as many illustrations of judgments which have suddenly come upon the godless in the height of their prosperity, as of general visitations in which the innocent have suffered with the guilty, by whom these judgments have been incurred. But with regard to his misfortune, Job cannot and ought not to look at it from the standpoint of the divine justice. For the proposition, which we will give in the words of Brentius, quidquid post fidei justificationem pio acciderit, innocenti accidit , is applicable to our present subject.
If, then, Job’s suffering were not so severe, and his faith so powerfully shaken, he would comfort himself with the thought that the divine ways are unsearchable; since, on the one hand, he cannot deny the many traces of the justice of the divine government in the world (he does not deny them even here), and on the other hand, is perplexed by the equally numerous incongruities of human destiny with the divine justice. (This thought is rendered more consolatory to us by the revelation which we possess of the future life; although even in the later Old Testament times the last judgment is referred to as the adjustment of all these incongruities; vid., the conclusion of Ecclesiastes.) His own lot might have remained always inexplicable to him, without his being obliged on that account to lose the consciousness of the divine love, and that faith like Asaph’s, which, as Luther says, struggles towards God through wrath and disfavour, as through thorns, yea, even through spears and swords.
Job is passing through conflict and temptation. He does not perceive the divine motive and purpose of his suffering, nor has he that firm and unshaken faith which will keep him from mistaken views of God, although His dispensations are an enigma to him; but, as his first speech (ch. 3) shows, he is tormented by thoughts which form part of the conflict of temptation. The image of the gracious God is hidden from him, he feels only the working of the divine wrath, and asks, Wherefore doth God give light to the suffering ones? – a question which must not greatly surprise us, for, as Luther says, “There has never been any one so holy that he has not been tormented with this quare , quare , Wherefore? wherefore should it be so?” And when the friends, who know as little as Job himself about the right solution of this mystery, censure him for his inquiry, and think that in the propositions: man has no righteousness which he can maintain before God, and God does not pervert the right, they have found the key to the mystery, the conflict becomes fiercer for Job, because the justice of God furnishes him with no satisfactory explanation of his own lot, or of the afflictions of mankind generally. The justice of God, which the friends consider to be sufficient to explain everything that befalls man, Job can only regard as the right of the Supreme Being; and while it appears to the friends that every act of God is controlled by His justice, it seems to Job that whatever God does must be right, by virtue of His absolute power.
This principle, devoid of consolation, drives Job to the utterances so unworthy of him, that, in spite of his conviction of his innocence, he must appear guilty before God, because he must be speechless before His terrible majesty, – that if, however, God would only for once so meet him that he could fearlessly address Him, he would know well enough how to defend himself (ch. 9). After these utterances of his feeling, from which all consciousness of the divine love is absent, he puts forth the touching prayer: Condemn me not without letting me know why Thou dost condemn me! (Job 10:1-7).
As he looks back, he is obliged to praise God, as his Creator and Preserver, for what He has hitherto done for him (Job 10:8-12); but as he thinks of his present condition, he sees that from the very beginning God designed to vent His wrath upon him, to mark his infirmities, and to deprive him of all joy in the consciousness of his innocence (Job 10:13-17). He is therefore compelled to regard God as his enemy, and this thought overpowers the remembrance of the divine goodness. If, however, God were his enemy, he might well ask, Wherefore then have I come into being? And while he writhes as a worm crushed beneath the almighty power of God, he prays that God would let him alone for a season ere he passes away into the land of darkness, whence there is no return (Job 10:18-22).
Brentius remarks that this speech of Job contains inferni blasphemias , and explains them thus: non enim in tanto judicii horrore Deum patrem, sed carnificem sentit ; but also adds, that in passages like Job 10:8-12 faith raises its head even in the midst of judgment; for when he praises the mercies of God, he does so spiritu fidei , and these he would not acknowledge were there not a fidei scintilla still remaining. This is true. The groundwork of Job’s faith remains even in the fiercest conflict of temptation, and is continually manifest; we should be unable to understand the book unless we could see this fidei scintilla , the extinction of which would be the accomplishment of Satan’s design against him, glimmering everywhere through the speeches of Job. The unworthy thoughts he entertains of God, which Brentius calls inferni blasphemias , are nowhere indulged to such a length that Job charges God with being his enemy, although he fancies Him to be an enraged foe. In spite of the imagined enmity of God against him, Job nowhere goes so far as to declare enmity on his part against God, so far as . He does not turn away from God, but inclines to Him in prayer. His soul is filled with adoration of God, and with reverence of His power and majesty; he can clearly discern God’s marvellous works in nature and among men, and His creative power and gracious providence, the workings of which he has himself experienced. But that mystery, which the friends have made still more mysterious, has cast a dark cloud over his vision, so that he can no longer behold the loving countenance of God. His faith is unable to disperse this cloud, and so he sees but one side of the divine character – His Almightiness. Since he consequently looks upon God as the Almighty and the Wrathful One, his felling alternately manifests itself under two equally tragical phases. At one time he exalts himself in his consciousness of the justice of his cause, to sink back again before the majesty of God, to whom he must nevertheless succumb; at another time his feeling of self-confidence is overpowered by the severity of his suffering, and he betakes himself to importunate supplication.
It is true that Job, so long as he regards his sufferings as a dispensation of divine judgment, is as unjust towards God as he believes God to be unjust towards him; but if we bear in mind that this state of conflict and temptation does not preclude the idea of a temporal withdrawal of faith, and that, as Baumgarten ( Pentat. i. 209) aptly expresses it, the profound secret of prayer is this, that man can prevail with the Divine Being, then we shall understand that this dark cloud need only be removed, and Job again stands before the God of love as His saint.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
(18) Wherefore then hast thou brought me forth?Here Job reverts to the strain of his original curse (Job. 3:11, &c.).
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
b. Lost in the perplexities of existence, the sole favour he has to ask is a little respite (for reflection) before he descends to the land of deepest darkness, Job 10:18-22.
18. O that I had given up the ghost Rather, I should have died. “If the flesh should murmur and cry out, as Christ even cried out and was feeble,” (says Luther, in one of his consolatory letters,) “the spirit nevertheless is ready and willing, and, with sighings that cannot be uttered, will cry, Abba, Father, is it thou? thy rod is hard, but thou still art Father; I know that of a truth.” Delitzsch. In sad contrast with this, and in harmony with Job, is the language of Artabanus, the Persian: “Short as our time is, there is no man, whether it be here among this multitude or elsewhere, who is so happy as not to have felt the wish I will not say once, but full many a time that he were dead, rather than alive.” Herodotus, 7:46.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Job 10:18 Wherefore then hast thou brought me forth out of the womb? Oh that I had given up the ghost, and no eye had seen me!
Ver. 18. Wherefore hast thou brought me forth out of the womb? ] Why? but was not that a mercy? David esteemed it so, and gives God the glory, Psa 22:9 . But discontent is an utter enemy to thankfulness. The bird sings not till she have taken up her stand to her mind. Some men’s eyes are so bleared and glazed with tears for what they want, that they cannot see what good they have, cannot see mercies for blessings. Job here, in a distemper, wisheth himself (as he had done before, Job 3:1-26 . “Who can understand his errors?” Psa 19:12 ) either unborn, or presently dead, without the distance of one day between his birth and his burial. In quo errorem erravit non levem, vir alioqui pientissimus; this was a worse wish than if he had desired that his life might be presently taken away from him, for herein he showeth himseff unthankful to God for all his former benefits; and not so only, but angry with God for the good he had done him: thus we have seen dogs in a chase fly at their masters, and children in a pelt strike at their parents. But these were the voices of the flesh lusting against the spirit, which afterwards (being justly reprehended for them, first by Elihu, and then also by God himself) he repressed and repented of in dust and ashes, Job 42:6 .
Oh that I had given up the ghost, and no eye had seen me!
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Wherefore . . . ? Figure of speech Erotesis. App-6.
Oh . . . ! Figure of speech Ecphonesis.
given up the ghost = died. Hebrew. gava’. Compare Job 3:11; Job 13:19; Job 14:10. Not Job 11:20.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Job 10:18-22
Job 10:18-22
JOB’S APPEAL FOR GOD TO ALLOW HIM TO DIE
“Wherefore then hast thou brought me forth out of the womb?
I had given up the ghost, and no eye had seen me.
I should have been as though I had not been;
I should have been carried from the womb to the grave.
Are not my days few? cease then,
And let me alone that I may take comfort a little,
Before I go whence I shall not return,
Even to the land of darkness and the shadow of death;
The land dark as midnight,
The land of the shadow of death without any order,
And where the light is as midnight.”
“The Land of … the shadow of death” (Job 10:21). Here again we have an expression picked up and used in the Psalms (Psalms 23).
Some scholars understand Job’s remarks here as coming very close to the category of blasphemy. For example, Franks wrote that, “He accuses God of having created him only to torment him … that he sees faults where they do not exist … torturing him to make him confess … having blessed and preserved him, while all the while secretly planning to torture him.” We reject such comments. One may find many other similar comments in the writings of scholars regarding this chapter; but as we have noted above, there are marvelous evidences of faith and submission to God’s will throughout the whole passage.
E.M. Zerr:
Job 10:18-19. The uselessness of his birth is the subject of this paragraph. See my comments at Job 3:10-11 for explanation of the passage.
Job 10:20. This verse is a pitiable plea for just a few days of comfort before Job was to pass from the earth.
Job 10:21-22. This doleful description of the state of man after death applies only to the fleshly part. What Job said in Job 3:13-17 showed he did not believe that death ended it all for the spiritual part of human beings.
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
hast thou: Job 3:10, Job 3:11, Jer 15:10, Jer 20:14-18, Mat 26:24
given up: Job 11:20, Job 14:10
Reciprocal: Job 3:3 – Let the day Ecc 4:3 – better Jer 20:17 – he slew