Job 3:12

Translations

King James Version (KJV)

Why did the knees prevent me? or why the breasts that I should suck?

American King James Version (AKJV)

Why did the knees prevent me? or why the breasts that I should suck?

American Standard Version (ASV)

Why did the knees receive me? Or why the breast, that I should suck?

Basic English Translation (BBE)

Why did the knees take me, or why the breasts that they might give me milk?

Webster's Revision

Why did the knees receive me? or why the breasts that I should be nursed?

World English Bible

Why did the knees receive me? Or why the breast, that I should nurse?

English Revised Version (ERV)

Why did the knees receive me? or why the breasts, that I should suck?

Clarke's Job 3:12 Bible Commentary

Why did the knees prevent me? - Why was I dandled on the knees? Why was I nourished by the breasts? In either of the above cases I had neither been received into a mother's lap, nor hung upon a mother's breasts.

Barnes's Job 3:12 Bible Commentary

Why did the knees prevent me? - That is, the lap of the nurse or of the mother, probably the latter. The sense is, that if he had not been delicately and tenderly nursed, he would have died at once. He came helpless into the world, and but for the attention of others he would have soon died. Jahn supposes (Archae section 161) that it was a common custom for the father, on the birth of a son, to clasp the new-born child to his bosom, while music was heard to sound, and by this ceremony to declare it as his own. That there was some such recognition of a child or expression of paternal regard, is apparent from Genesis 50:23. Probably, however, the whole sense of the passage is expressed by the tender care which is necessarily shown to the new-born infant to preserve it alive. The word rendered "prevent" here קדם qâdam, means properly to anticipate, to go before, as the English word "prevent" formerly did; and hence, it means to go to meet anyone in order to aid him in any way. There is much beauty in the word here. It refers to the provision which God has made in the tender affection of the parent to "anticipate" the needs of the child. The arrangement has been made beforehand. God has taken care when the feeble and helpless infant is born, that tender affection has been already created and prepared to meet it. It has not to be created then; it is not to be excited by the suffering of the child; it is already in existence as an active, powerful, and self-denying principle, to "anticipate" the needs of the newborn babe, and to save it from death.

Wesley's Job 3:12 Bible Commentary

3:12 The knees - Why did the midwife or nurse receive and lay me upon her knees, and not suffer me to fall upon the bare ground, 'till death had taken me out of this miserable world, into which their cruel kindness hath betrayed me? Why did the breasts prevent me from perishing through hunger, or supply me that should have what to suck? Thus Job unthankfully despises these wonderful mercies of God towards poor helpless infants.

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