“Why did you bring me out from the womb? Would that I had died before any eye had seen me
Job has been answering Bildad, and his reply ends in a wish that his life had never started. He has just described how God formed him in the womb, so why, he asks, bring out a life only to crush it?
Where the Cry Falls
This verse opens the last part of a long speech, and Job returns to ground he has covered before:
Samuel RidoutThe wailing passes from blaming God for His injustice to lamenting his birth… It is the lament of chapter 3 again.
The Question Behind the Question
Just before this, Job described how God formed him with care and kept him alive — then said God had hidden these things in His heart. William Kelly puts Job's meaning into plain speech:
William Kelly"Your hands fashioned and made me, and now You have destroyed me altogether" — after all the love You have shown me. "Remember, I beg You, that You have made me as the clay." He had not made him an angel. He had not made him someone above this suffering… "And these things You have hidden in Your heart." "You had that in Your heart before I was born. You meant me to come into this, and I do not know why."
The Death Struggle
The sores were not the worst of it:
Arno Clemens GaebeleinAnd now the darkest of all. It is not so much the physical agony, the boils and running sores torturing him. It is more the bitter awareness that he is losing his hold on God. He is beginning to look on Him no longer as a loving friend, but as a harsh, unmovable tyrant. It is a death struggle he is passing through. His soul is weary of his life, and so he pours out the bitterness of his heart.
Yet Job aims all of it at God Himself, and one writer finds faith in that:
Samuel RidoutHe does not stand, as the poet described a despairing man… but rather pours out all those thoughts before the eye of God. May not this very abandonment of misery suggest the root of faith in his heart?
A Wish That Cannot Be Granted
The wish is impossible, and the tone is not respectful:
Leslie M. GrantIf Job was living only for trouble, he thought, then why had God allowed him to be born? How much better it would have been, he thought, if only he had died before birth. Then no eye on earth would have seen him; he would have passed straight from the womb to the grave. So he tells God to "cease," that is, to leave him alone. Did he not stop to think that this was an insolent way to speak to his Maker? But he was too distressed to think soberly.
Job is not the only one who reached for death like this:
Arno Clemens GaebeleinHis mind turned to death as the great liberator. Moses and Elijah show the same trend of thought and weakness; so did disappointed Jonah when he said, "It is better for me to die."
What He Could Not See Ahead
To Job the grave looked like the end. He did not know what was ahead:
Leslie M. GrantLittle did he realise that God would give him more than a little comfort in this present world. In the end he would also go to a land of pure light and unspeakable joy. He did not have the great revelation that believers have today. Believers now know the matchless grace of the Lord Jesus for every present need. They also know the eternal glory of His presence, which every believer will enter in the future.
The Purpose Inside the Despair
Where God is not known, this despair runs one way; where He is known, it runs another:
The Bible TreasuryThe first thought after waking up to the full sense of your own misery, and the most bitter one, is to curse the day you were born. It is a terrible impression, and when God is not known it is the one that leads to suicide. But when God is known, as in Job's case, it is the beginning of healthy action. That is not because of the discontent and wretchedness it uncovers. It is because you now know and feel what death is: being completely cut off from everything… Death, because of present misery, is preferred. Living in it has no attraction for the heart. This Job feels. He does not know that God is seeking to make him a witness of dependence on Himself against Satan. But this is God's way. Discipline may have the effect of making us feel that death is better than life, but it is working out God's purpose.
Summary
- Cause — The pain behind this question was not the boils. Job was losing his grip on God's goodness, and had started to read his Maker as an enemy.
- Contradiction — He had just praised the skill that formed him in the womb. Then he turned that same skill against God: You meant me for this.
- Candour — He aims his doubts at God, not away from Him. That may be the root of faith still alive in him.
- Company — Moses, Elijah and Jonah each reached for death as an escape; this weakness is not unique to Job.
- Conclusion — Job's wish was impossible, and he spoke it without sober thought. Yet the discipline behind it was working out God's purpose, and the grave he dreaded as darkness opens, for the believer, onto light.