Bible Strands
Job 10:18
Why then did You bring me from the womb? Oh, that I had died, and no eye had seen me!
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Job addresses God directly in chapter 10, immediately after describing how divine anger has multiplied and hardships assault him in relentless waves.
The words — לָמָּה (lamah) = why?; רֶחֶם (rechem) = womb; הֹצֵאתָ (hotzetah) = you brought out. The phrasing frames existence not as a gift but as an unwelcome extraction into a hostile environment.
The thread — The same birth-cursing motif appears in Jeremiah 20:14, while Job 3:10 echoes the wish that the womb had concealed his coming sorrow. Job 11:20 provides a foil by describing the wicked dying with eyes that fail, contrasting Job’s desire for non-existence with the reality of divine judgment.
Why it lands — It requires the reader to confront the raw logic of despair: when suffering feels unearned and relentless, the mind naturally questions the very act of being brought into awareness. The verse demands honest engagement with doubt before any resolution is offered.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Wherefore then hast thou brought me forth out of the womb? Oh that I had given up the ghost, and no eye had seen me!
Cross-references
- Jeremiah 20:14 Cursed be the day I was born! May the day my mother bore me never be blessed.
- Job 3:10 For that night did not shut the doors of the womb to hide the sorrow from my eyes.
- Job 11:20 But the eyes of the wicked will fail, and escape will elude them; they will hope for their last breath.”
- Job 14:10 But a man dies and is laid low; he breathes his last, and where is he?
- Jeremiah 15:10 Woe to me, my mother, that you have borne me, a man of strife and conflict in all the land. I have neither lent nor borrowed, yet everyone curses me.
- Matthew 26:24 The Son of Man will go just as it is written about Him, but woe to that man by whom He is betrayed. It would be better for him if he had not been born.”