Big Idea: Job brings his most troubling thoughts and deepest pains to words and views his adversity in the light of his commitment to God.

Understanding the Text

Job 3 begins an extended section of poetry in which Job and his three friends speak in turn. After the prose prologue in Job 1–2, the narrator fades from view, and we hear the voices of the individual speakers. Without the narrator, the readers have no interpreter to explain what is being said, so they have to listen attentively to the threads of the dialogue.

After a seven-day silence, Job releases his pent-up emotions, cursing the day he was born (3:1–10). He does not directly curse God, as the adversary has predicted (1:11; 2:5), but his turgid language evidences that he feels as though the whole created order of the world has com…