Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it.
The verse belongs to Job's poetic lament over the day of his birth, which he would have to be darkness, unregarded by God from above and unlit by light. It is an anguished outcry of despair and rebellion from a heart deeply disturbed by trouble. Even a patient and good man can be thrown into such inward turmoil when affliction is great. The words record what Job felt in his suffering, not a doctrine that every utterance in the book is true.
The setting is one in which God was disciplining Job and bringing him through the fire of severe affliction. At the same time his three friends were determined to charge him with sin and to declare that his sufferings came because of sin. Their course shows how prone people are to misjudge their fellows in the same way. In that setting the verse opens the great problems of an overruling providence and of sin and suffering that have perplexed humanity through all ages.
The verse belongs to Job's poetic lament over the day of his birth, which he would have to be darkness, unregarded by God from above and unlit by light. It is an anguished outcry of despair and rebellion from a heart deeply disturbed by trouble. Even a patient and good man can be thrown into such inward turmoil when affliction is great. The words record what Job felt in his suffering, not a doctrine that every utterance in the book is true.
The setting is one in which God was disciplining Job and bringing him through the fire of severe affliction. At the same time his three friends were determined to charge him with sin and to declare that his sufferings came because of sin. Their course shows how prone people are to misjudge their fellows in the same way. In that setting the verse opens the great problems of an overruling providence and of sin and suffering that have perplexed humanity through all ages.