What Does Job 3:3 Mean?
Let the day perish on which I was born, and the night in which it was said, "A strong man has been conceived."
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man child conceived.THE KEY
The wish reaches past birth to conception, asking for the whole beginning of a life to disappear.
THE MEANING
When you meet this line, it gives language to anguish that wishes its beginning could be undone, from birth back to conception. The wish remains exposed in its full severity, with no consolation layered over it.
THE ROOT
יֹאבַד
yovad
GROWS FROM
אבד
avad
Perish, be lost.
“perish” in this verse is yovad. The day is wished out of existence, not merely forgotten. This root also carries the sense of being lost, giving the wish its full force: the day itself vanishes.
ALSO GROWS
oved: Perishing; one who is lost.
אֹבֵד
It shows the root describing loss as a state, as well as the day’s wished-for disappearance.
avaddon: Destruction; a place or state of ruin.
אֲבַדּוֹן
It carries the root toward complete ruin, echoing the verse’s stark wish to erase the day.
אִוָּלֵד
ivvaled
GROWS FROM
ילד
yalad
Bring forth; beget; give birth.
“born” in this verse is ivvaled. This root also gives the words for a child and for generations: birth is both one person’s arrival and the opening of a line of lives. The verse aims its anguish at the beginning of that line, not only at the life that follows.
ALSO GROWS
yeled: Child.
יֶלֶד
The child is the one brought forth, linking Job’s birth to the root’s concrete outcome.
toledot: Generations; births or origins.
תּוֹלְדוֹת
This branch extends birth into what follows, showing how one beginning opens into generations.
הֹרָה
horah
GROWS FROM
הרה
harah
Conceive; become pregnant.
“has been conceived” in this verse is horah. The line reaches behind birth to the beginning in the womb. Its anguish encompasses conception as well as the day of delivery, naming the whole beginning of life.
ALSO GROWS
harah: Pregnant.
הָרָה
It keeps the root anchored in the state of carrying a child, the hidden beginning the verse reaches back toward.
herayon: Pregnancy; conception.
הֵרָיוֹן
This noun makes the verse’s backward reach explicit: its wish includes the moment life begins.
THE PATTERN
Lament can voice the wish that suffering had been avoided by a life never beginning.
And why do you bring me out of the womb? Would that I had died away, and no eye sees me!Cursed be the day in which I was born; let not the day my mother bore me be blessed.Yea, better than them is the one who has not yet been, who has not seen the harmful work done under the sun.THE THREAD
Cursed be the day in which I was born; let not the day my mother bore me be blessed.The root ילד (yalad) appears in both “born” and “bare me” in Jeremiah: the verse names both a person’s arrival and the mother who brings that person forth. Job’s line reaches even further back, from the day of birth to the night conception is announced.
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