Job 3:10

10 Because it did not close the doors of my mother's womb, Nor hid sorrow from my eyes. 11 Why did I not die from the womb, Come forth from the womb and expire? 12 Why have the knees welcomed me? And why the breasts, that I should suck? The whole strophe contains strong reason for his cursing the night of his conception or birth. It should rather have closed (i.e., make the womb barren, to be explained according to Sa1 1:5; Gen 16:2) the doors of his womb (i.e., the womb that conceived concepit him), and so have withdrawn the sorrow he now experiences from his unborn eyes (on the extended force of the negative, vid., Ges. 152, 3). Then why, i.e., to what purpose worth the labour, is he then conceived and born? The four questions, Job 3:11., form a climax: he follows the course of his life from its commencement in embryo (מרהם, to be explained according to Jer 20:17, and Job 10:18, where, however, it is מן local, not as here, temporal) to the birth, and from the joy of his father who took the new-born child upon his knees (comp. Gen 50:23) to the first development of the infant, and he curses this growing life in its four phases (Arnh., Schlottm.). Observe the consecutio temp. The fut. אמוּת has the signification moriebar, because taken from the thought of the first period of his conception and birth; so also ואגוע, governed by the preceding perf., the signification et exspirabam (Ges. 127, 4, c). Just so אינק, but modal, ut sugerem ea.

"You have heard of the patience of Job," says the apostle, Jam 5:11. So we have, and of his impatience too. We wondered that a man should be so patient as he was (ch. 1 and Job 2:1-13), but we wonder also that a good man should be so impatient as he is in this chapter, where we find him cursing his day, and, in passion, I. Complaining that he was born (Job 3:1-10). II. Complaining that he did not die as soon as he was born (Job 3:11-19). III. Complaining that his life was now continued when he was in misery (Job 3:20-26). In this it must be owned that Job sinned with his lips, and it is written, not for our imitation, but our admonition, that he who things he stands may take heed lest he fall.

3:10 shut my mother’s womb: Closing or opening the womb sometimes refers to conception (Gen 16:2; 20:18; 29:31; 30:22; 1 Sam 1:5-6), but here it refers to birth (see also Job 38:8).