Commentaries:
Barnes' Notes
Which long for death - Whose pain and anguish are so great that they would regard it as a privilege to die. Much as people dread death, and much as they have occasion to dread what is beyond, yet there is no doubt that this often occurs. Pain becomes so intense, and suffering is so protracted, that they would regard it as a privilege to be permitted to die. Yet that sorrow "must" be intense which prompts to this wish, and usually must be long continued. In ordinary cases such is the love of life, and such the dread of death and of what is beyond, that people are willing to bear all that human nature can endure rather than meet death; see the notes at Job 2:4. This idea has been expressed with unsurpassed beauty by Shakespeare:
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor' s wrong, the proud man' s contumely
The pangs of despised love. the law' s delay,
The insolence of office. and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When be himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death -
The undiscovered country, from whose bourne
No traveler returns-puzzles the will;
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of.
Hamlet.
And dig for it - That is, express a stronger desire for it than people do who dig for treasures in the earth. Nothing would more forcibly express the intense desire to die than this expression.
Other Barnes' Notes entries containing Job 3:21:
Job 3:23
Job 6:9
Job 14:13
Psalms 39:4
Ecclesiastes 2:12-26
Revelation 9:6
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