TRV
Translation
King James Version
For now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept: then had I been at rest,
Complete Jewish Bible
Then I would be lying still and in peace, I would have slept and been at rest,
American Standard Version
For now should I have lain down and been quiet; I should have slept; then had I been at rest,
World English Bible Messianic
For now should I have lain down and been quiet. I should have slept, then I would have been at rest,
Geneva Bible (1599)
For so shoulde I now haue lyen and bene quiet, I should haue slept then, and bene at rest,
Young's Literal Translation
For now, I have lain down, and am quiet, I have slept--then there is rest to me,
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In the KJVVerse 12,918 of 31,102
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Commentary on Job 3 verses 11–19
11 ¶ Why died I not from the womb? why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly?
12 Why did the knees prevent me? or why the breasts that I should suck?
13 For now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept: then had I been at rest,
14 With kings and counsellors of the earth, which built desolate places for themselves;
15 Or with princes that had gold, who filled their houses with silver:
16 Or as an hidden untimely birth I had not been; as infants which never saw light.
17 There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest.
18 There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor.
19 The small and great are there; and the servant is free from his master.
I. II. Main points1. 2. Sub-points
Job, perhaps reflecting upon himself for his folly in wishing he had never been born, follows it, and thinks to mend it, with another, little better, that he had died as soon as he was born, which he enlarges upon in these verses. When our Saviour would set forth a very calamitous state of things he seems to allow such a saying as this, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the paps which never gave suck (Luk 23:29); but blessing the barren womb is one thing and cursing the fruitful womb is another! It is good to make the best of afflictions, but it is not good to make the worst of mercies. Our rule is, Bless, and curse not. Life is often put for all good, and death for all evil; yet Job here very absurdly complains of life and its supports as a curse and plague to him, and covets death and the grave as the greatest and most desirable bliss. Surely Satan was deceived in Job when he applied that maxim to him, All that a man hath will he give for his life; for never any man valued life at a lower rate than he did.
I. He ungratefully quarrels with life, and is angry that it was not taken from him as soon as it was given him (Job 3:11, Job 3:12): Why died not I from the womb? See here, 1. What a weak and helpless creature man is when he comes into the world, and how slender the thread of life is when it is first drawn. We are ready to die from the womb, and to breathe our last as soon as we begin to breathe at all. We can do nothing for ourselves, as other creatures can, but should drop into the grave if the knees did not prevent us; and the lamp of life, when first lighted, would go out of itself if the breasts given us, that we should suck, did not supply it with fresh oil. 2. What a merciful and tender care divine Providence took of us at our entrance into the world. It was owing to this that we died not from the womb and did not give up the ghost when we came out of the belly. Why were we not cut off as soon as we were born? Not because we did not deserve it. Justly might such weeds have been plucked up as soon as they appeared; justly might such cockatrices have been crushed in the egg. Nor was it because we did, or could, take any care of ourselves and our own safety: no creature comes into the world so shiftless as man. It was not our might, or the power of our hand, that preserved us these beings, but God's power and providence upheld our frail lives, and his pity and patience spared our forfeited lives. It was owing to this that the knees prevented us. Natural affection is put into parents' hearts by the hand of the God of nature: and hence it was that the blessings of the breast attended those of the womb. 3. What a great deal of vanity and vexation of spirit attends human life. If we had not a God to serve in this world, and better things to hope for in another world, considering the faculties we are endued with and the troubles we are surrounded with, we should be strongly tempted to wish that we had died from the womb, which would have prevented a great deal both of sin and misery.
He that is born today, and dies tomorrow,
Loses some hours of joy, but months of sorrow.
4.The evil of impatience, fretfulness, and discontent. When they thus prevail they are unreasonable and absurd, impious and ungrateful. To indulge them is a slighting and undervaluing of God's favour. How much soever life is embittered, we must say, "It was of the Lord's mercies that we died not from the womb, that we were not consumed." Hatred of life is a contradiction to the common sense and sentiments of mankind, and to our own at any other time. Let discontented people declaim ever so much against life, they will be loth to part with it when it comes to the point. When the old man in the fable, being tired with his burden, threw it down with discontent and called for Death, and Death came to him and asked him what he would have with him, he then answered, "Nothing, but to help me up with my burden."
II. He passionately applauds death and the grave, and seems quite in love with them. To desire to die that we may be with Christ, that we may be free from sin, and that we may be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven, is the effect and evidence of grace; but to desire to die only that we may be quiet in the grave, and delivered from the troubles of this life, savours of corruption. Job's considerations here may be of good use to reconcile us to death when it comes, and to make us easy under the arrest of it; but they ought not to be made use of as a pretence to quarrel with life while it is continued, or to make us uneasy under the burdens of it. It is our wisdom and duty to make the best of that which is, be it living or dying, and so to live to the Lord and die to the Lord, and to be his in both, Rom 14:8. Job here frets himself with thinking that if he had but died as soon as he was born, and been carried from the womb to the grave, 1. His condition would have been as good as that of the best: I would have been (says he, Job 3:14) with kings and counsellors of the earth, whose pomp, power, and policy, cannot set them out of the reach of death, nor secure them from the grave, nor distinguish theirs from common dust in the grave. Even princes, who had gold in abundance, could not with it bribe Death to overlook them when he came with commission; and, though they filled their houses with silver, yet they were forced to leave it all behind them, no more to return to it. Some, by the desolate places which the kings and counsellors are here said to build for themselves, understand the sepulchres or monuments they prepared for themselves in their life-time; as Shebna (Isa 22:16) hewed himself out a sepulchre; and by the gold which the princes had, and the silver with which they filled their houses, they understand the treasures which, they say, it was usual to deposit in the graves of great men. Such arts have been used to preserve their dignity, if possible, on the other side death, and to keep themselves from lying even with those of inferior rank; but it will not do: death is, and will be, an irresistible leveller. Mors sceptra ligonibus aequat - Death mingles sceptres with spades. Rich and poor meet together in the grave; and there a hidden untimely birth (Job 3:16), a child that either never saw light or but just opened its eyes and peeped into the world, and, not liking it, closed them again and hastened out of it, lies as soft and easy, lies as high and safe, as kings and counsellors, and princes, that had gold. "And therefore," says Job, "would I had lain there in the dust, rather than to lie here in the ashes!" 2. His condition would have been much better than now it was (Job 3:13): "Then should I have lain still, and been quiet, which now I cannot do, I cannot be, but am still tossing and unquiet; then I should have slept, whereas now sleep departeth from my eyes; then had I been at rest, whereas now I am restless." Now that life and immortality are brought to a much clearer light by the gospel than before they were placed in good Christians can give a better account than this of the gain of death: "Then should I have been present with the Lord; then should I have seen his glory face to face, and no longer through a glass darkly." But all that poor Job dreamed of was rest and quietness in the grave out of the fear of evil tidings and out of the feeling of sore boils. Then should I have been quiet; and had he kept his temper, his even easy temper still, which he was in as recorded in the two foregoing chapters, entirely resigned to the holy will of God and acquiescing in it, he might have been quiet now; his soul, at least, might have dwelt at ease, even when his body lay in pain, Psa 25:13. Observe how finely he describes the repose of the grave, which (provided the soul also be at rest in God) may much assist our triumphs over it. (1.) Those that now are troubled will there be out of the reach of trouble (Job 3:17): There the wicked cease from troubling. When persecutors die they can no longer persecute; their hatred and envy will then perish. Herod had vexed the church, but, when he became a prey for worms, he ceased from troubling. When the persecuted die they are out of the danger of being any further troubled. Had Job been at rest in his grave, he would have had no disturbance from the Sabeans and Chaldeans, none of all his enemies would have created him any trouble. (2.) Those that are now toiled will there see the period of their toils. There the weary are at rest. Heaven is more than a rest to the souls of the saints, but the grave is a rest to their bodies. Their pilgrimage is a weary pilgrimage; sin and the world they are weary of; their services, sufferings, and expectations, they are wearied with; but in the grave they rest from all their labours, Rev 14:13; Isa 57:2. They are easy there, and make no complaints; there believers sleep in Jesus. (3.) Those that were here enslaved are there at liberty. Death is the prisoner's discharge, the relief of the oppressed, and the servant's manumission (Job 3:18): There the prisoners, though they walk not at large, yet they rest together, and are not put to work, to grind in that prison-house. They are no more insulted and trampled upon, menaced and terrified, by their cruel task-masters: They hear not the voice of the oppressor. Those that were here doomed to perpetual servitude, that could call nothing their own, no, not their own bodies, are there no longer under command or control: There the servant is free from his master, which is a good reason why those that have power should use it moderately, and those that are in subjection should bear it patiently, yet a little while. (4.) Those that were at a vast distance from others are there upon a level (Job 3:19): The small and great are there, there the same, there all one, all alike free among the dead. The tedious pomp and state which attend the great are at an end there. All the inconveniences of a poor and low condition are likewise over; death and the grave know no difference.
Levelled by death, the conqueror and the slave,
The wise and foolish, cowards and the brave,
Lie mixed and undistinguished in the grave.
- Sir R. Blackmore
Matthew Henry (1662–1714) — Commentary on the Whole Bible. This section covers verses 11–19. Public domain.
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Hesychius of JerusalemAD 450
HOMILIES ON JOB 6.3.13-16
To enjoy the beauty of God’s creation is desirable. It is a good thing to become a human being and to receive the image of God. It is not good to linger in an impure life. Many people are fascinated by an impure life, but not the righteous. Therefore, the departure from this world is no reason for sadness, for death is rest and deliverance from pain. Death is sleep. To depart from one’s body is rest.
Gregory the DialogistAD 604
54. For this was man set in Paradise, that, had he attached himself by the chains of love to an obedient following of his Creator, he might one day be transported to the heavenly country of the Angels, and that, without the death of the flesh. For he was made immortal in such sort, that, if he sinned, he would yet be capable of dying, and in such wise mortal, that, if he sinned not, he should even be capable of never dying, and that, by desert of a free choice, he might attain the blessedness of those realms, wherein there is neither possibility of sinning nor of death. There then, where, since the time of the Redemption, the Elect are conveyed, with the death of the flesh intervening, to the same place our first parents, if they had remained stedfast in the state of their creation, would undoubtedly have passed, and that, without the death of the body. Man then would have lain still and been quiet, he would have ‘slept and been at rest,’ in that being brought to the rest of his eternal country, he would have found as it were a retreat from these clamours of hu.man frailty. For since sin, he, as it were, is kept awake and crying aloud, who bears with struggling opposition the strife of his own flesh. This stillness of peace man, when he was created, enjoyed, when he received the freedom of his will, to encounter his enemy withal. And because he yielded himself up to him of his own accord, he forthwith found in himself what was to rise in clamours against him, forthwith met in the conflict with the riotings of his frail nature; and though he had been created by his Maker in peaceful stillness, yet, once of his own will laid low under the enemy, he had to endure the clamours of the fight. For the very suggestion of the flesh is a kind of outcry against the mind's repose, which man was not sensible of before the transgression, plainly because there was nought that he could be exposed to undergo from infirmity of his own. But since he has once voluntarily subjected himself to his enemy, now being bound with the chains of his sins, he serves him in some things even against his will, and suffers clamours in the mind, when the flesh strives against the Spirit. Did not clamours within meet his ears, who was pressed with the words of an evil law at variance with himself, saying, But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. [Rom. 7, 23] Let then the holy man reflect in what a peace of mind he would have reposed, if man had refused to entertain the words of the serpent, and let him say, For now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept, then had I been at rest; i.e. I should have withdrawn into the retirement of my breast to contemplate my Creator, had not the fault, the first sin of consent, betrayed me out of myself to the riotings of temptation; and let him add to the joys of this state of tranquillity, whom he would have had for his fellows in the enjoyment
Source: Quotations drawn from early Church Fathers and historical Christian theologians (AD 100–1500). Some quotes address the surrounding passage context rather than this verse alone.
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SUMMARY
Job 3:13 encapsulates the profound depth of Job's despair, expressing a fervent wish for the peace and stillness of death as an escape from his unimaginable suffering. Having endured catastrophic loss and debilitating illness, Job longs for the quiet repose of the grave, where he imagines he would find a cessation of torment and a profound rest, contrasting sharply with the relentless agony of his current existence. This verse marks a pivotal moment in the book, articulating the raw human cry for relief in the face of overwhelming pain and setting the stage for the ensuing theological dialogue on the nature of suffering and divine justice.
CONTEXT
EXPOSITION AND ANALYSIS
Key Word Analysis
Verse Breakdown
Literary Devices
Job 3:13 employs several powerful literary devices to convey the depth of Job's despair. Metaphor is prominently used, with "slept" serving as a direct comparison for death, highlighting its quiet, unconscious, and restful aspects. This is a common biblical idiom for passing away, emphasizing the cessation of activity and awareness. Parallelism is evident in the phrasing "lain still and been quiet" and "should have slept: then had I been at rest," where synonymous or complementary ideas are presented in successive clauses, intensifying the singular desire for peace through cessation. The entire expression is also a form of Hyperbole, as Job's language is extreme, reflecting the overwhelming nature of his suffering and his profound longing for an absolute end to his pain, even if it means non-existence. This dramatic language emphasizes the unbearable quality of his current agony, making his cry for death understandable in the context of his profound distress.
THEOLOGICAL AND THEMATIC CONNECTIONS
Job 3:13, with its raw articulation of despair and longing for death as rest, connects deeply to the biblical understanding of the human condition under the curse of sin and the ultimate hope found in God. While Job's immediate desire is for the cessation of pain in the grave, his lament highlights the universal human yearning for relief from suffering and the inherent brokenness of a world marred by sin. The verse implicitly raises profound questions about divine justice and the purpose of suffering, which are central to the entire book of Job. The concept of "rest" here, though initially sought in death, foreshadows a greater, spiritual rest that God promises to His people, a rest that transcends the grave and is found in His eternal presence. It underscores that true and lasting rest is ultimately not found in non-existence, but in the redemptive work of God, who alone can provide ultimate peace.
REFLECTION AND APPLICATION
Job's unfiltered expression of despair in this verse serves as a profound validation of human suffering. It reminds us that it is permissible, and often necessary, to voice our deepest anguish, doubts, and longings for relief, even to the point of wishing for an end to our pain. This verse challenges us to approach those in profound distress with radical empathy, resisting the urge to offer simplistic theological answers or to minimize their suffering. Instead, we are called to sit with them in their pain, just as Job's friends initially did in silence, and to create a safe space for their laments. For believers, Job's experience also underscores that while earthly rest in the grave may be a temporary cessation of pain, the ultimate and eternal rest is found not in death itself, but in the presence of God, a hope that transcends the limitations of Job's understanding at this moment. This should move us to offer a Gospel-centered hope that acknowledges suffering but points to a future where all tears will be wiped away.
Questions for Reflection
FAQ
Does Job's desire for death imply he was suicidal?
Answer: While Job expresses a deep longing for death as an escape from his unbearable suffering, it's crucial to distinguish this from a proactive, self-destructive intent typically associated with suicide. Job's wish is for a passive cessation of existence, a longing that he had never been born or had died at birth, rather than an active plan to end his life. He yearns for the peace of death, not death as an act of rebellion or self-annihilation. This is a common theme in biblical laments, where individuals in extreme distress wish for death as a release from torment (e.g., Jonah 4:3, 1 Kings 19:4). It reflects the intense human desire for relief from overwhelming pain, not necessarily a will to defy God or end one's life by one's own hand.
How does this verse relate to the Christian view of death?
Answer: Job's lament in Job 3:13 reflects a common human desire for rest in the face of suffering, a sentiment that resonates across all cultures and times. For the Christian, while death still represents a cessation of earthly toil and pain, it is viewed through the lens of Christ's resurrection. The "rest" that Job longed for finds its ultimate fulfillment and transformation in the Christian hope of eternal life and resurrection. Believers anticipate not just the silence of the grave, but a glorious future with God, where there will be no more sorrow, pain, or tears (Revelation 21:4). Paul expresses this transformed perspective in Philippians 1:21-23, stating that "to live is Christ and to die is gain," because to die is "to be with Christ, which is better by far." Thus, while the desire for rest is universal, the Christian hope elevates it beyond mere cessation to a joyful, conscious communion with the Savior.
CHRIST-CENTERED FULFILLMENT
Job's profound longing for rest in death, articulated in Job 3:13, finds its ultimate and glorious fulfillment in Jesus Christ. Job, in his agony, could only conceive of rest as the cessation of being in the silent grave. However, the New Testament reveals a deeper, redemptive rest offered by the Suffering Servant, Jesus, who entered into the fullness of human pain, even to the point of death on the cross. Christ's suffering was not for His own sin, but for ours, bearing the full weight of the curse that brings all human pain and ultimately death. Through His death and resurrection, Jesus conquered the power of death itself, transforming the grave from a place of mere cessation into a pathway to eternal life. He invites all who are weary and burdened to find true rest in Him, declaring, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28). This rest is not merely the absence of pain, but a spiritual peace and security found in communion with God, a foretaste of the eternal Sabbath rest promised to the people of God (Hebrews 4:9-11). Job's desperate cry for an end to suffering points forward to the One who ultimately brings an end to all suffering, death, and tears, making all things new (Revelation 21:4) through His victorious resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:20-22).