Matthew Poole and continuators on Job 3:8

8. Let them curse it [that curse the day, ] [who are ready to raise up their mourning. ]

i. e. Their day, to wit, their Birth-day: for the Pronoun is here omitted for the meeters sake: For this and the following Chapters are written in verse, as all grant. So the Sense is, when their Afflictions move them to curse their own Birth-day, let them remember mine also, and bestow some Curses upon it. Or, the day of their distress and trouble, which sometimes is called simply the day, as Obad. 12. Or, the day of the Birth or death of that person whose Funerals are celebrated by the hired Mourners, who in their solemn Lamentations used to curse the day that gave them such a Person, whom they should so suddenly lose, and therefore it had been better never to have enjoyed him, and to curse the day in which he died as an unlucky, and execrable day. Or the day, i. e. the Day-light: which to some persons is an hateful thing and the Object of their Curses, namely to leud Persons and Thieves, to whom the morning Light is even as the Shadow of death, Ch. 24. 17. as also to persons oppressed with deep Melancholy, as it is here implied, v. 20. So the sense is this, They who use to curse the day only, but generally love and bless the night, yet let this night be as abominable and execrable to them as the day-time generally is.

Who are brim full of sorrow, and always ready to pour out their Cries, and Tears, and Complaints, and with them Curses, as men in great passions frequently do. Or, such Mourning-Men, or Mourning-Women, whose common Employment it was, and who were hired to mourn, and therefore were always ready to do so upon funeral occasions; of which see 2 Chron. 35. 25. Ier. 9. 17, 18, 20. Ezek. 30. 2. Ioel 1. 15. Amos [illegible: 1+ letters], 16. Matth. 9. 23. And this Sense suits with the use of the last word in Hebrew Writers, of which a plain and pertinent Instance is given by the learned Mercer. But because that word is commonly used in another sense for the Leviathan, both in this Book and elsewhere in Scripture, as Psal. 74. 14. and 104. 26. Isa. 27. 1. And because this very Phrase of raising the Leviathan is used afterward▪ Ch. 41. 25. others render the words thus▪ Who are prepared, or ready to raise the Leviathan. It is evident that the Leviathan was a great and dreadful Fish or Sea-Monster, though there be some disagreement about its kind or quality, and that the raising of or endeavouring to catch the Leviathan was a dangerous and terrible work, as is plain from Iob 41. And therefore those Sea-Men, who have been generally noted for great Swearers and cursers, especially when their Passions of Rage or Fear are raised, being now labouring to catch this Sea-monster, and finding themselves and their Vessel in great danger from him, they fall to their old trade of Swearing and Cursing, and curse the day wherein they were born, and the day in which they ventured upon this most hazardous and terrible work. Others understand this Leviathan mystically, as it is used Isa. 27. 1. for the great Enemy of Gods Church and People, called there also the Dragon, to wit, the Devil, whom the Magicians both now do, and formerly did use to raise with fearful Curses and Imprecations. Not as if Iob did justifie this practice, but only it is a rash and passionate wish, that they who pour sorth so many Curses undeservedly, would bestow their deserved Curses upon this day,

Marginal references: [illegible: 1 word], A [illegible: 1 word].