The Lament of Job (Job 3: 1 - 6)

Blot out the day of my birth and the night when my parents created a son. Forget about that day, cover it with darkness, and send thick, gloomy shadows to fill it with dread. Erase that night from the calendar and conceal it with darkness.

Here Job speaking forthrightly, dramatically and even with cynicism, bewails his life: by contrast with "Let there be light" of creation (Gen. 1:3), which distinguished day from night, Job asks that the day of his birth be plunged into darkness forever. The rhetorical questions and statements express doubts as to whether life is worth living: If a person is suffering, is death not more desirable than life? The last part of this soliloquy asks the question about God almost without mentioning him: What sense can we make of things if God brings into being someone who is destined to suffer? Job feels so wretched that he cannot find the answer, but the fact that he asks this question implies that an answer must be there. Most commentators justify Job's lament by arguing that there is no sin involved in someone desiring to live no longer if he is weighted down by suffering: sin comes in if a person commits suicide or desires to do so. Jeremiah, too, cursed the day of his birth (Jer. 20: 14-17), but he did not sin. It also may mean that he desired to be in heaven with his Lord than suffering among humankind.

Daily Prayer: Father, I know that you understand suffering as your Son was called a man of suffering. Jesus was brought into the world not to live, but to die so that others may live. The answer to Job's lament is to identify with the sufferings of the promised savior so that he can bear the suffering that those who belong to him possess. In Jesus name I pray Amen.