From NASB 1995

1Afterward

How long afterward? The TV preachers said I could rebuke it and it would go away. I’m believing God for a miracle. Days pass and the miracle doesn’t come. Every verse that was supposed to be the key to your healing and deliverance, hasn’t worked. How long did Job hang on to his initial confidence and good attitude. We don’t know. All we know is that there was an “afterward.” A conceding of defeat. A communication of confusion. A questioning of all the theology he’d ever learned.

Job opened his mouth and cursed [a]the day of his birth.

Is Job sinning? Is it wrong to say, I wish I had never been born? Yes, once God has let you know the truth of your future and the precious promises that are ours for today. But do some of God’s people go there anyway? John Bunyan. Charles Spurgeon. David Brainerd. I’m sure there are others.

2And Job [b]said,

3“May the day on which I was to be born perish,

As well as the night which said, ‘A [c]boy is conceived.’

4“May that day be darkness;

May God above not care for it,

Nor light shine on it.

5“May darkness and black gloom claim it;

May a cloud settle on it;

May the blackness of the day terrify it.

6“As for that night, may darkness seize it;

May it not rejoice among the days of the year;

May it not come into the number of the months.

7“Behold, may that night be barren;

May no joyful shout enter it.

8“May those curse it who curse the day,

When you’re cursing some other day, remember to curse mine, cause it’s right up there with the most worthy of cursing.

Who are [d]prepared to disturb Leviathan.

Occult practice of calling up a monster, or huge beast like the crocodile, to curse. Or people crazy enough to stir up a crocodile are the same kind of people who should curse my birth.

9“May the stars of its twilight be darkened;

May it wait for light but have none,

And may it not see the [e]breaking dawn;

10Because it did not shut the opening of my mother’s womb,

Or hide trouble from my eyes.

11“Why did I not die [f]at birth,

Come out of the womb and pass away?

Job wants God to rewrite history. If only… we often say and think. This is not profitable. It can never happen. What has been is done. You can’t change it.

12“Why were the knees there in front of me,

To receive me as I was born.

And why the breasts, that I would nurse?

13“For now I would have lain down and been quiet;

I would have slept then, I would have been at rest,

Job’s ideas of the afterlife are a bit sketchy here, as are many Old Testament characters. He fantasizes that the great and rich people of the earth are now at peace in death. The New Testament does not agree with this imagery and we should not be in agreement with a man who is suffering as he did and tormented in his thinking as he was.

14With kings and counselors of the earth,

Who rebuilt ruins for themselves;

15Or with rulers who had gold,