Job 3:1

He could not stand the presence of his friends. He had borne many sorrows and bitter suffering. But these friends came and looked at his misery without a word. It was too much for Job. Did they suspect him? He could not bear doubts about his walk with God, least of all from them. Were they not friends? If they loved him, why that silence — that ominous silence for seven days and seven nights?

He had quietly submitted to the loss of children, property, and health. Satan had been sent away, and his wife's advice refused. But the presence of his friends made Job break down completely.

Note that he did not curse God. He called down a curse on the day of his birth, grieving that he had not died when his mother gave him birth. He thought that if he had never seen the light, he would have "been at rest," and not in this terrible suffering.

Job still did not accuse God of any wrong, but he did curse the day of his birth. This was not blaming God directly. Yet, little as he saw it, he was blaming God indirectly, for it was God who gave him life… Job's grief was so deep that he never stopped to see that what he asked for was impossible. How could the day of his birth perish? That day was long gone. At the time it had been a day of light, because a boy had been born into the world… But his anguish moved him, not faith.

The effect of God's discipline is to expose the secret workings and feelings of self, which otherwise would not have been detected or known — and what is not known is never given up. Job now felt himself a wretched man, with misery all around him. He had outlived every enjoyment on earth, and he cursed his day. What had he lived for, and what should he live for? He had no idea of the place he held before God, or of how God was preparing him, through terrible suffering, to prove to Satan that His own estimate of Job was right.

Job was a true saint of God; but he needed to learn himself, as we all do. He needed the roots of his moral being laid bare before his own eyes, so that he might truly abhor himself and repent in dust and ashes. He also needed a truer and deeper sense of what God was, so that he might trust Him and justify Him in every circumstance.

Job was as much an example in trouble as he had been in prosperity. The root of sin was still not reached… At last God allows his friends to come and comfort him. How much hardship we can bear on our own! But as soon as our friends see it, our pride rises up. Human pity often stirs our impatience. And Job, so famous for his patience, ends by cursing the day of his birth!

The Spirit does tell us of his "patience" (James 5:11). But has He not also recorded a good deal of impatience, for our teaching? Let us be gentle here. Who among us would have stood the strain of suffering better than Job? How amazed we have been at times to see how much stubbornness and unbelief suffering and trial have uncovered in us!