Let the day perish on which I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a male child conceived.
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Ephrem The Syrian
AD 373
Learn here the reason which led the Emmanuel to a new birth in the flesh. Certainly the sin of the world was the reason for the advent of Christ. - "Commentary on Job 3.4"
24. It seems as it were like day, when the good fortune of this world smiles upon us, but it is a day that ends in night, for temporal prosperity often leads to the darkness of affliction. This day of good fortune the Prophet had condemned, when he said, Neither have I desired man's day [‘diem hominis’ Vulg.], Thou knowest it. [Jer. 17, 16] And this night our Lord declared He was to suffer at the final close of His Incarnation, when he declared by the Psalmist as if in the past, My reins also instructed me in the night season. [Ps. 16, 7] But by ‘the day’ may be understood the pleasures of sin, and by ‘the night’ the inward blindness, whereby man suffers himself to be brought down to the ground in the commission of sin. And therefore he wishes the day may perish, that all the flattering arts which are seen in sin, by the strong hand of justice interposing, may be brought to nought. He wishes also that the ‘night may perish,’ that what the blinded mind executes even in yielding co...
4. For what is to be understood by ‘the day of our birth,’ save the whole period of our mortal state? So long as this keeps us fast in the corruptions of this our mutable state of being, the unchangeableness of eternity does not appear to us. He, then, who already beholds the day of eternity, endures with difficulty the day of his mortal being. And observe, he saith not, ‘Let the day perish wherein I was created,’ but, let the day perish wherein I was born. For man was created in a day of righteousness, but now he is born in a time of guilt; for Adam was created, but Cain was the first man that was born. What then is it to curse the day of his birth, but to say plainly, ‘May the day of change perish, and the light of eternity burst forth?’
5. But inasmuch as we are used to bid perish in two ways, (for it is in one way that we bid perish, when we desire to any thing that it should no longer be, and in another way that we bid it perish, when we desire that it should be ill therew...
“Let the day perish in which I was born,” not the day in which I was formed but that “in which I was born.” … God, in fact, forms me into goodness, but Eve, who transgressed, conceives me into sadness. And David himself did not ignore that, but after learning it from the Spirit, he introduces the concept into a prophetic psalm with these terms: “For, behold, I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins did my mother conceive me.” How? To be sure, Eve began to conceive and give birth after the fall in paradise and after the transgression due to the miserable nourishment of the tree. - "Homilies on Job 6.3.3"
According to Job’s words, he desires that the moon or the stars might not illuminate his night but that it may be obscured by thick darkness, which Job calls the shadow of death. If one carefully examines the text’s meaning, Job demands through his prayers that sin may appear as it actually is in its great depravity, so that sin may not simulate virtue. Rather, after sin has been recognized as dark and deadly, it may be avoided and rejected. - "Commentary on Job 3.4–5"
