Job 3:7

Job then mourns and curses his day — not God, nothing of that kind. Yet he still speaks out his horror of the day his birth was announced, and that is unfitting. His whole birth-scene was before him, wrapped in gloom. Everything connected with his coming into the world was horrible in his eyes.

Almost everywhere, a birthday is an occasion of remembrance and rejoicing. To poor Job it seemed a moment to be deplored and cursed. In his days of prosperity he had feared that some trouble might come. Now it had come upon him with unequalled force. His agonized words in Job 3 surely move our sympathy. We read them some four thousand years after he spoke them.

Job did not even now charge God foolishly, but he did curse the day of his birth. This was not directly blaming God, but however little he realised it, he was indirectly blaming God, for it was God who gave him life.

Job's grief was so deep that he did not even consider that what he was saying was an impossibility. How could the day perish in which Job was born? How could history reverse itself? That day had passed long before. … Later Job would thank God he had been born, and that thankfulness will endure for eternity. But he was moved by his anguish, not by faith.

One of two things upset the mind of Job, or perhaps the two together. It may have been the sympathy of his friends — for alone, and from God in His presence, we can bear what we cannot bear once we have the chance to complain in front of man. Or it may have been pride, which is not roused while we are alone but is wounded when others witness our misery. And so he curses the day of his birth. The depths of his heart are displayed. It was this that he needed.

The great point is the mourning over this terrible lot of his, that he was ever allowed to come into the world to bear such awful suffering. Where do you find that in Christ? "For this cause was I sent." The Lord accepts it; He felt, deeply felt; was troubled in spirit. He felt it, but He also accepted it. For this cause He had come. But not so Job. He could not understand why a holy God should allow such suffering, though his own sufferings were nothing compared with those of Christ.

Indeed there had never been a child of Adam or a believer so visited as Job; and as yet he did not know the end, that the Lord is full of pity, and of tender mercy. He was in the depth of his trial, and the silence of his friends made it worse. Worse still was coming: their suspicion, spoken more and more openly, like drawn swords.

What a contrast is the joy of the believer as he dwells on his spiritual birthday. … So in the many persecutions and afflictions which happened to Paul for the gospel's sake, we hear not the faintest approach to these laments of Job. He and Silas were beaten, thrown into prison, their feet fast in the stocks. Their thoughts were not of cursing the day of their birth; they brought songs in the night.