Job 3:9

Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark,.... Either of the morning or evening twilight; both may be meant, rather the latter, because of the following clause; the sense is, let not these appear

Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark; let it look for light, but have none; neither let it see the dawning of the day: Dawning of the day - literally, eyelashes of morning; [ bª`ap`apeey

Let the stars, which are the glory and beauty of the night, to render it amiable and delightful to men, be covered with thick darkness, nd that both in the evening twilight, as is here expressed, when the stars begin to arise and shine forth; and also in the further progress of the night, even till the morning begins to dawn, as the following words imply. Let it look for light, but have none; let its darkness be aggravated with the disappointment of its hopes and expectations of light. He ascribes sense or reasoning to the night, by a poetical fiction usual in all writers. The dawning of the day, Heb. the eyelids of the day, i.e. the morningstar, which ushers in the day, and the beginning, and consequently the progress, of the morning light, and the day following. Let this whole natural day, consisting of night and day, be blotted out of the catalogue of days, as he wished before.

Job 3:9 Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark; let it look for light, but [have] none; neither let it see the dawning of the day:Ver. 9. Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark] If the stars of its twilight be dark, how great is that darkness! Job would not have this night to have light of stars, or hope of day’ s dawn, hope of better, or place of worse. And this part of the curse he reserveth to the last place, as worse than any of the former. Semblably, that judgment of pining away in their iniquity is the last that God denounceth, Leviticus 26:39, after those other dismal ones there to befall the disobedient. And that, Revelation 22:11, Let him that is filthy be filthy still, is the last, but not the least (of those that befall in this life), threatened in all the New Testament. Let it look for light, but have none] Heb. But none. Loss of expectation is a great loss. Esau found it so, and the mother of Sisera, Judges 5:28, and those shall once, that come knocking and bouncing at heaven’ s gates, with "Lord, Lord, open unto us," and shall hear, "Depart ye." The hopes of the wicked fail them when at highest; whereas the saints find that comfort in extremity which they durst not expect: their light shall rise in obscurity, Isaiah 58:10, it shall shine more and more unto the perfect day, Proverbs 4:18. Let it not see the dawning of the day] Heb. The eyelids of the morning; that is, the first breakings of light, the morning rays or beams peeping abroad. These this night must never see. Heaven is a nightless day (ανεσπεροςημερα), hell a dayless night. Fire there is, but without light; it burneth, but shineth not to those reprobates who are in tenebras ex tenebris infeliciter exclusi, infelicius excludendi; thrust into outer darkness, a darkness beyond a darkness, as the dungeon is beyond the prison, Matthew 8:12.

(9) The dawning . . .—Literally, the eyelids of the dawn.

Verse 9. Let the stars of the twilight thereof] The stars of the twilight may here refer to the planets Venus, Jupiter, Mars, and Mercury, as well as to the brighter fixed stars. Let it look for light] Here the prosopopoeia or personification is still carried on. The darkness is represented as waiting for the lustre of the evening star, but is disappointed; and these for the aurora or dawn, but equally in vain. He had prayed that its light, the sun, should not shine upon it, Job 3:4; and here he prays that its evening star may be totally obscured, and that it might never see the dawning of the day. Thus his execration comprehends every thing that might irradiate or enliven it.

9. the twilight thereof] that is, the morning twilight of that night. Let its morning stars, that should herald its day, go out—as the next clause explains: let it look for the light of a day that never breaks. see the dawning of the day] lit. behold the eyelids of the morning. This beautiful figure looks like an idea from Western poetry, just as the chamber of the Sun, Psalms 19:5. All commentators quote the parallel from Sophocles, χρυσέαςἁμέραςβλέφαρον, Antigone, 103.

Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark - That is, be extinguished, so that it shall be total darkness - darkness not even relieved by a single star.

9. The dawning of the day — Literally, Let it not see the eyelashes of the dawn; that is, the first rays of the sun. Sophocles speaks of the eyelid of the golden day. (Antig., 103.) The Arab poets call the sun the eye of the day.