There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary are at rest.
Job breaks seven days of silence with a curse on the day he was born, not with a prayer. In the middle of that outburst he pictures death as a place of quiet, where oppressors stop and the exhausted lie down. Is this faith speaking, or a crushed man's longing for escape?
The cry behind the words
One commentator notes what Job cursed and what he did not. He reads Job's words about rest as real, if dim, knowledge of what death held for a believer.
Their presence, their tears, their torn robes and the dust on their heads affected Job. At last he broke the silence. He opened his mouth and cursed his day. He did not curse God, note that. He called down a curse on the day he was born, regretting that he had not died when his mother gave him birth. In Job's day people had little light about the unseen world. Yet he knew that death did not mean the end of existence. For the believer it meant rest, and freedom from the trouble caused by the wicked — the kind of trouble he had suffered from the Sabeans and Chaldeans.
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What "cease from troubling" means
The phrase is easily misread as a promise that evil people find peace after death. It says something narrower.
F. B. Hole"There the wicked cease from troubling" (Job 3:17) — from troubling other people, not from being troubled themselves. There those whose strength is worn out are at rest.
Kelly gives another rendering of the verse:
William KellyThere the wicked cease from raging, and there the weary are at rest.
The great leveller
Job is not describing one grave but the state of everyone in it.
Samuel RidoutDeath is described here as a rest (verses 13-19) that all share equally. The old and the young, even the unborn baby, the great and the small, are all at rest. Kings whose palaces have crumbled into ruins, and princes who left all their vast wealth behind, are here at last in deep and equal repose. The wicked cannot trouble them. A master cannot demand service from his slave. Prisoners and their captors are no different in the presence of death, that great leveller of mankind.
Kelly reads the same list as a comment on human greatness — kings "spending life in building monuments that decay themselves, or cramming their houses with silver and gold they must leave behind."
Wishing instead of trusting
One writer marks the difference between wishing for rest and trusting God for it.
Leslie M. GrantIf only he had died, he says, he would be at rest (v.13). In death at least, he claims, the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest. The prisoners go free, and the slave is free from his master (vv.17-19). But wishing is not facing facts as they are. Faith faces facts and gives God credit for doing what He knows is best. But Job's faith had become very weak.
Righteous and wicked after death
Commentators differ on how far Job had drifted. Ridout is hard on him, hearing in this rest a sleep with no moral difference left in it.
Samuel RidoutIs there no distinction between the condition of the wicked and of the righteous after death? … The righteous and the wicked are always contrasted, and they are morally unlike. This points clearly to very different futures. By blurring the future in this way, Job shows how far his soul had drifted from the truth of God.
Frederick Grant reads him more kindly. He insists that Job's subject here is his own case, not the fate of the wicked.
Frederick W GrantHe was surely thinking of his own sorrows. About the "wicked," all he says is that they "cease from troubling." … He was not thinking about the portion of the wicked, but about what his own portion would be. In death a "land of darkness" stretched before him, and his eye could see very little into it. Yet he had something of the Psalmist's confidence in One who would be with him there.
Rest, not non-existence
Some take these words as evidence that death is simple non-existence. The reply turns on the words "there" and "rest".
Frederick W GrantOne writer says, "There — in the grave — the weary are at rest." But Job does not say "in the grave." That writer would give the righteous and the wicked alike rest in non-existence in the grave. But is this "rest"? Who rests? Can a thing that is not, rest? I think not, if words have meaning.
Job answered by Job
The answer to chapter 3 comes from Job himself, later in the book, and from the New Testament letters.
Samuel RidoutJob's own words disprove his unbelief here: "I know that my Redeemer lives" (Job 19:25). … Then there are the full Christian statements of the letters. Do words like "My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better" echo Job's unbelieving laments?
Summary
- Rest defined. The wicked stop troubling others. The verse promises relief to the oppressed, not peace to the oppressor.
- Rest levelled. Kings, princes, prisoners and slaves lie down together. Death takes away every earthly rank.
- Rest wished. Job wants this rest instead of trusting God for it. Wishing is not faith. Faith faces the facts and trusts God to know best.
- Rest misread. "Rest" needs someone to rest. The words cannot prove that the dead have stopped existing.
- Rest secured. Job later says, "I know that my Redeemer lives." That word, and the desire to depart and be with Christ, answer the darkness of this lament.