Mark Tabata’s Weekday Devotionals
Friday August 28 2026
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Job 3:1-11-After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. 2 And Job spoke, and said: 3 “May the day perish on which I was born, And the night in which it was said, ‘A male child is conceived.’ 4 May that day be darkness; May God above not seek it, Nor the light shine upon it. 5 May darkness and the shadow of death claim it; May a cloud settle on it; May the blackness of the day terrify it. 6 As for that night, may darkness seize it; May it not rejoice among the days of the year, May it not come into the number of the months. 7 Oh, may that night be barren! May no joyful shout come into it! 8 May those curse it who curse the day, Those who are ready to arouse Leviathan. 9 May the stars of its morning be dark; May it look for light, but have none, And not see the dawning of the day; 10 Because it did not shut up the doors of my mother’s womb, Nor hide sorrow from my eyes. 11 “Why did I not die at birth? Why did I not perish when I came from the womb?
In the midst of his bitterness, pain, and anger, Job wished not only that he had been born, but that the Earth itself had not brought forth for mankind to dwell upon.
Instead of wishing only for death, Job wishes he had never been born in the first place–and even implies he wishes there had never been any light or space for any human life at all. This raises questions about Job’s motives for speaking, which will be important to keep in mind as we consider the chapter. It is also important to remember that the word ‘wish’ is probably too weak, for curses and blessings in the Old Testament express not just wishes but count as ritually effective speech, helping to bring about what they describe. Although Job perhaps did not literally expect creation to dissolve into chaos around him as he spoke, his first poem does count as a verbal assault on God’s world. To appreciate the gravity and magnitude of this curse, it should be remembered that an ancient Semite like Job would have viewed creation significantly differently from modern Westerners. Job is verbally assaulting not just impersonal matter obeying scientific laws, but that beautiful, complex, dependent environment God made for us for the sake of significant relationship and satisfying work (Gen. 1; Ps. 104). But the goodness and grandeur of God’s world in no way restrains Job’s pain (2: 13). Job’s curse encompasses not just himself, but all of existence. Job begins by cursing not just the day of his birth, but even the night it was announced he was conceived (v. 3). Let that day be darkness, Job says; let it simply fall out of existence (v. 4). The first clause of verse 4 echoes God’s initial calling into existence of light in Genesis 1: 327–the first hint that Job is restricting his curse not merely to his own existence, but to the whole world. A second hint comes in the next verse, when Job calls on the ‘shadow of death’ (my tr.) to claim the day he was born (cf. Ps. 23: 4). This is no natural darkness Job is summoning to seize, to dwell on, to terrify his birthday; he hopes spiritual darkness will ‘win back [its] demonic rights’ over creation. 28 Unusually, verses 4–6 each have three clauses, as if the vigour and viciousness of Job’s curse cannot be contained within the normal two-part structure of a poetic line. Leviathan himself is mentioned in verse 8, where Job cheers on those magicians skilled to rouse the chaos monster that would overwhelm creation. Ancient Egyptians imagined that a giant serpent, Apep, would try to swallow the sun (Ra) each night as it travelled through the underworld on a ship, and their priests had extensive magic rituals that would help to repel that chaos so that the normal order of sunrise could continue each day. 29 Job here poetically calls on these religious specialists to reverse their normal procedure and help chaos win–but, of course, if Leviathan is aroused, the ‘fleeing serpent’ (see Job 26: 12–13) will do far more than just swallow Job’s day. All light and life will be endangered. The next verse ends Job’s curse in a moving way as we watch the stars at twilight wink out and the ‘eyelids’ of morning wake to nothing (v. 9). (Eric Ortlund, Piercing Leviathan: God’s Defeat of Evil in the Book of Job (New Studies in Biblical Theology 56), 21-22 (Kindle Edition): Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press)
Many through the years have experienced pain and sorrow, but few I have known had wished that the Earth itself had never been brought forth. It raises the interesting question:
Would non-existence be better then existence?
Better to be, then not to be?
Years ago, one author I read explored this idea.
Nonexistence rather than existence: what an idea! Still, it’s worth asking, if the world is a package deal, if free will for man means the choice to do good or evil, and if natural suffering comes built into the infrastructure of nature and of evolution, well, then is the whole thing worth it? Did God do us a favor by creating us, or would he have done us a greater favor not to have created us in the first place? To answer this question, it might help to try an exercise in reflecting on your life. Make a list of the really bad things that have happened to you. Don’t focus on the things that are your fault, though; enumerate all the unfair and terrible injustices you have suffered, either at the hands of others or through unavoidable calamity. Don’t leave anything out; go ahead and show us all your scars. Do this for the past year, and then do it for your whole life. Now make a second list, and here I’d like you to put down all the really good things that have happened to you. Again, let’s not focus on the rewards of your own efforts, on the successes you feel you have merited. Rather, enumerate, as far back as you can remember, all the sublime and wonderful and hilarious experiences that you’ve had. I did this recently, and I found that my “good” list vastly outweighed my “bad” list. In fact, it was no contest. And I suspect that for the vast majority of people, positive experiences will be common and bad experiences relatively rare. The point here is that by the irrefutable test of experience, life for most of us is a very good thing, and thus our overall response to it is not regret but gratitude. (Dinesh D’ouza, Godforsaken: Bad Things Happen. Is There A God Who Cares? Yes. Here’s Proof!, 184-185 (Kindle Edition); Carol Stream, Illinois; Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.)
Job himself learned that existence is better then non-existence.
How often do we count our blessings?
Father, thank You for every good and perfect gift. We know that they come down from You. Continue with us. Amen.