Job 3:16
Or as an hidden untimely birth I had not been; as infants which never saw light.
Or as an hidden untimely birth,.... Or "hid, as one born out of time", as Mr. Broughton reads it; the Septuagint use the same word as the apostle does, when he says the like of himself, 1 Corinthians 15:8; the word has the signification of "falling" s, and designs an abortive, which is like to fruit that falls from the tree before it is ripe; and this may be said to be "hidden", either in the belly, as the Targum, or however from the sight of man, it being not come to any proper shape, and much less perfection; now Job suggests, that if he had not lain with kings, counsellors, and princes, yet at least he should have been as an abortion, and that would have been as well to him: then
I had not been; or should have been nothing, not reckoned anything; should not have been numbered among beings, but accounted as a nonentity, and should have had no subsistence or standing in the world at all:
as infants which never saw light; and if not like an untimely birth, which is not come to any perfection, yet should have been like infants, which, though their mothers have gone their full time with them, and they have all their limbs in perfection and proportion, yet are dead, or stillborn, their eyes have never been opened to see any light; meaning not the light of the law, as the Targum, but the light of the sun, or the light of the world, see Ecclesiastes 6:3; infants used to be buried in the wells or caves of the mummies t.
s כגפל "sicut abortivus qui ex utero excidit, aut in terram cadit", Michaelis. t Vansleb, ut supra, (Relation of a Voyage to Egypt,) p. 90.