Commentaries:
Barnes' Notes
Let that day be darkness - Let it not be day; or, O, that it had not been day, that the sun had not risen, and that it had been night.
Let not God regard it from above - The word rendered here "regard" ׁ dârash means properly to seek or inquire after, to ask for or demand. Dr. Good renders it here, "Let not God inclose it," but this meaning is not found in the Hebrew. Noyes renders it literally, "Let not God seek it." Herder, "Let not God inquire after it." The sense may be, either that Job wished the day sunk beneath the horizon, or in the deep waters by which he conceived the earth to be surrounded, and prays that God would not seek it and bring it from its dark abode; or he desired that God would never inquire after it, that it might pass from his remembrance and be forgotten. What we value, we would wish God to remember and bless; what we dislike, we would wish him to forget. This seems to be the idea here. Job hated that day, and he wished all other beings to forget it. He wished it blotted out, so that even God would never inquire after it, but regard it as if it had never been.
Neither let the light shine upon it - Let it be utter darkness; let not a ray ever reveal it. It will be seen here that Job first curses "the day." The amplification of the curse with which he commenced in the first part of Job 3:3, continues through Job 3:4-5; and then he returns to the "night," which also (in the latter part of Job 3:3) he wished to be cursed. His desires in regard to that unhappy night, he expresses in Job 3:6-10.
Other Barnes' Notes entries containing Job 3:4:
2 Samuel 1:21
Job 3:4
Psalms 39:4
Isaiah 60:5
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