Job 3 Summary - 5 Minute Bible Study

Job 3 Short Summary:

In Job 3, after sitting with his friends for 7 days, Job expresses his deep despair by cursing the day of his birth. He didn’t understand why God allowed him to be born if suffering and loss was to be his fate. He trusted that God’s light was still with him, but he couldn’t make sense of his circumstances. Job 3 begins the poetic section of the book in which Job and his friends discuss the reasons for his suffering.

Job 3 Bible Study

SHORT OUTLINE OF THE BOOK OF JOB

• Job 1-2 – Job is Persecuted by Satan

• Job 3-37 – Job and His Friends Discuss the Reason He is Experiencing Persecution

• Job 38-41 – God Speaks with Job and Reveals His Greatness to Him.

• Job 42 – God Restores What Job Lost

WHEN:

• The date of the writing of Job is unknown and still debated. Some believe it was written during the time of the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) or even earlier, while others suspect it was written during the time of Judah’s Babylonian captivity (607-537 B.C.).

• I take the earlier date. The description of Job as the “greatest of all the people of the east” (1:3) and an absence of references to Israel, Jerusalem, and the Temple suggests to me that this book was written early.

KEY CHARACTERS:

• Job – A blameless and upright man who Satan persecuted in an attempt to turn his heart away from God.

• Leviathan – The leviathan was a mighty creature, likely now extinct, described in detail in Job 41 and mentioned in Psalm 74. It was a powerful scaled creature that was untamable by men and unkillable with human weapons. Some “scholars” have suggested leviathan is the crocodile, but the description in Job 41 rules that out. More likely, the leviathan was an animal we would classify as a dinosaur.

WHERE:

• Most scholars surmise the land of Uz was in northern Saudi Arabia, either immediately south of the Dead Sea, I the land that would become known as Edom, or immediately east of the Dead Sea, which is today the country of Jordan.

OUTLINE:

• JOB CURSES THE DAY OF HIS BIRTH (3:1-26):

  • In Job 3, Job mourned the day of his birth because of his trouble. He used a lot of figurative and poetic language. This poetic language will continue through much of the dialogue of Job and his friends (Job 3-37). After 7 days sitting with his friends in misery, Job cursed the day he was born.

  • He cursed the joy that was associated with his conception and birth, saying that he wished it had never happened.

  • He asked God why He didn’t allow him to die at birth, at least then he would be at peace.

  • In death, the weary find rest, and the burdened find relief, but Job was still suffering in the land of the living.

  • Job asked God why death was given to those who wanted to live while it was withheld from those who wanted to die.

  • “Why is light given to him who is in misery, and life to the bitter in soul, who long for death, but it comes not, and dig for it more than for hidden treasures, who rejoice exceedingly and are glad when they find the grave?” (3:20-22).

  • Job didn’t understand his situation. He was confused about why God kept him alive. If God was angry at him, why didn’t He just kill him?

  • Job felt like the light of God was still with him (3:20, 23), but he didn’t know how to make sense of what was happening to him.   

APPLICATION

• It may seem strange to the reader that Job expressed such contentment in God’s will in chapter 2, but he seems overwhelmed by his trials in chapter 3, even wishing he had never been born.

• But this is the reality of extended periods of suffering. Some days you wake up at peace, knowing God is going to handle things. Other days, you struggle to shake the pain, grief, and difficulty, and you groan under the weight of it all.

• Just as with Job, having some hard days doesn’t mean we’ve abandoned our faith in God.

• There is real pain, real grief, real sadness, real loneliness, real hardship, real disappointment that is part of this life, and we are meant to feel it!

• When we feel it, rather than letting it turn our hearts away from God, let it turn our hearts to God, because He is the only One who can fix these problems, He is the only One who can give us a home where these terrible things aren’t a plague on us anymore.