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Job 3:21

Adam Clarke
Bible Commentary

Which long for death - They look to it as the end of all their miseries; and long more for a separation from life, than those who love gold do for a rich mine.

Albert Barnes
Notes on the Whole Bible

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.

Matthew Henry
Concise Bible Commentary
Job was like a man who had lost his way, and had no prospect of escape, or hope of better times. But surely he was in an ill frame for death when so unwilling to live. Let it be our constant care to get ready for another world, and then leave it to God to order our removal thither as he thinks fit. Grace teaches us in the midst of life's greatest comforts, to be willing to die, and in the midst of its greatest crosses, to be willing to live. Job's way was hid; he knew not wherefore God contended with him. The afflicted and tempted Christian knows something of this heaviness; when he has been looking too much at the things that are seen, some chastisement of his heavenly Father will give him a taste of this disgust of life, and a glance at these dark regions of despair. Nor is there any help until God shall restore to him the joys of his salvation. Blessed be God, the earth is full of his goodness, though full of man's wickedness. This life may be made tolerable if we attend to our duty. We look for eternal mercy, if willing to receive Christ as our Saviour.