Satan’s Challenge Fails–Job Does Not Curse God

His memories of wealth and joy began to fade, largely erased by Job’s current misery. The presence of Job’s friends mourning his wretched condition brings forth a torrent of heartfelt but provocative words. Job’s doxology gives way to a lament of his birth. The greatest man of the east, is now crushed.

We read in Job 3:1-3, “After this,” [the arrival of his friends and the week spent in mourning] “Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. And Job said: `Let the day perish on which I was born, and the night that said, ‘A man is conceived.’” Job dares to plead with the Lord to remove that day when Job was conceived from human history. Job continues in verses 4-7, pleading “let that day be darkness! May God above not seek it, nor light shine upon it. Let gloom and deep darkness claim it. Let clouds dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it. That night—let thick darkness seize it! Let it not rejoice among the days of the year; let it not come into the number of the months. Behold, let that night be barren; let no joyful cry enter it.” Job’s cry can be summarized, “it would have been better if I had never been born.”

The saddest part of Job’s ordeal is that his present pain has obscured the wonderful memories of all the joys he had known before. When life is viewed through the lens of pain and loss, it is easy for the sufferer to reason, “it would be better to have never existed at all than to endure my present sufferings.” Some of us have been there. Some of us are there now. Sustained pain robs us of so much–our joy often goes first, but at times pain even robs us of the assurance of our salvation.

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