Let them curse it that curse the day, who are ready to raise up their mourning.
who are ready.
2 Chronicles 35:25 And Jeremiah lamented for Josiah: and all the singing men and the singing women spake of Josiah in their lamentations to this day, and made them an ordinance in Israel: and, behold, they are written in the lamentations.
Jeremiah 9:17,18 Thus saith the LORD of hosts, Consider ye, and call for the mourning women, that they may come; and send for cunning women, that they may come: …
Amos 5:16 Therefore the LORD, the God of hosts, the Lord, saith thus; Wailing shall be in all streets; and they shall say in all the highways, Alas! alas! and they shall call the husbandman to mourning, and such as are skilful of lamentation to wailing.
their mourning.
Job 41:1,10 Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook? or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down? …
those prepared to rouse Leviathan.
Leviathan is a mythical sea creature mentioned in several parts of the Bible, including Psalms and Isaiah. In ancient Near Eastern mythology, Leviathan is often depicted as a chaos monster, symbolizing disorder and evil. The mention of Leviathan here suggests a desire to invoke powerful forces to undo the day of Job's birth. This reflects the cultural context where such creatures were seen as adversaries to divine order. In a broader biblical narrative, Leviathan can be seen as a type of Satan or evil, opposing God's creation. The imagery of Leviathan is also used in prophetic literature, such as Isaiah 27:1, where God promises to defeat the creature, symbolizing the ultimate triumph over chaos and evil. This can be seen as a foreshadowing of Christ's victory over sin and death, bringing order and redemption to creation.
“May it be cursed…” (Job 3:8a)
• Job, in painful honesty, calls for his birth-day to receive the opposite of blessing. Compare Job 3:1–3 where he already lamented, “May the day perish on which I was born.”
• Scripture treats blessing and cursing as solemn, real declarations (Genesis 12:3; Deuteronomy 30:19). Job’s words show how severely suffering can push a godly person, yet he still directs his complaint to God, acknowledging divine sovereignty even in despair (Job 1:21–22).
“…by those who curse the day…” (Job 3:8b)
• “Those who curse the day” refers to people reputed for pronouncing weighty imprecations—professional mourners or sorcerers in the ancient Near East. Job’s wish is extreme: let the most notorious cursers aim their power at his birthday.
• Scripture exposes occult practices as real but forbidden (Deuteronomy 18:10–12; Isaiah 8:19). Job does not endorse such practices; he uses cultural imagery to underscore how passionately he longs for that day’s erasure, much as Jeremiah later cried, “Cursed be the day I was born!” (Jeremiah 20:14).
• Even in invoking these cursers, Job never abandons faith. He speaks within poetic lament, not doctrinal prescription. His words reflect anguish, not theological approval of cursing rituals (cf. Job 42:7–8, where God defends Job’s ultimate integrity).
“…those prepared to rouse Leviathan.” (Job 3:8c)
• Leviathan appears later in God’s speeches as a mighty sea creature beyond human mastery (Job 41:1–34; Psalm 104:26). Here the name evokes chaos and untamable power.
• Ancient sailors feared stirring Leviathan, believing it could overwhelm creation. Job pictures experts bold enough to summon that monster—an image of invoking cosmic darkness over his birth-day.
• The literal existence of Leviathan is affirmed by Scripture; God describes it as a tangible animal displaying His creative glory. For Job, only forces capable of awakening such a beast seem adequate to blot out the dreaded date.
• Cross references stress God’s absolute rule even over Leviathan (Psalm 74:13–14; Isaiah 27:1). Job’s lament, therefore, indirectly acknowledges that only the Almighty can permit or restrain this power.
Job 3:8 channels the raw pain of a righteous sufferer. He yearns for his birth-day to be struck by the most potent cursers imaginable—those daring enough to rouse Leviathan itself. The verse paints a vivid picture of desperation while still assuming God’s ultimate control over curses, days, and monstrous forces. Suffering may drive believers to dark expressions, yet Scripture shows God is bigger than our anguish and sovereign over every chaos.
(8) That curse the day--i.e., Let those who proclaim days unlucky or accursed curse that day as pre-eminently so; or let them recollect that day as a standard or sample of cursing. "Let it be as cursed as Job's birth day."These people are further described as being ready to arouse leviathan (Authorised Version, "raise up their mourning"), or the crocodile--persons as mad and desperate as that. Let the most hopeless and reckless of mankind select that day as the one which they would choose to curse. This seems to be Job's meaning.
Verse 8. - Let them curse it that curse the day. Very different explanations are given of this passage. Some suppose it to mean, "Let those desperate men curse it who are in the habit of cursing their day," like Job himself (Job 3:1) and Jeremiah (Jeremiah 20:14). Others suggest a reference to such as claimed power to curse days, and to divide them into the lucky and the unlucky. In this case Job would mean, "Let the sorcerers who curse days curse especially this day," and would thus seem, if not to sanction the practice, at any rate to express a certain amount of belief in the sorcerers' power. The second clause has also a double interpretation, which adapts it to either of these two suggested meanings (vide infra). Who are ready to raise up their mourning. This is an impossible rendering. Translate (with the Revised Version), who are ready to rouse up leviathan. "Rousing leviathan" may be understood in two ways. It may be regarded as spoken in the literal sense of those who are rash enough and desperate enough to stir up the fury of the crocodile (see the comment on Job 41:1), or in a metaphorical sense of such as stir up to action by their sorceries the great power of evil, symbolized in Oriental mythologies by a huge serpent, or dragon, or crocodile. On the whole, the second and deeper sense seems preferable; and we may conceive of Job as believing in the power of sorcery, and wishing it used against the night which he so much dislikes.