איוב, פרק י׳, פסוק י״ח

Faced with unbearable suffering, a person may reach a point of such deep despair that they question the very justification for their existence. Job experiences this exact agony, wishing his life had ended before it even began.

The primary approach among commentators is that Job returns to his fundamental complaint regarding his creation. He turns to God and asks why He brought him into the world alive. If his destiny was to be filled with such terrible pain that death is preferable to life, Job argues it would have been better to die in the womb or during birth. Had he died then, he would have been buried quietly, unseen by anyone. He would have passed directly from the womb to the grave, as if he had never existed at all.

In contrast to this focus on physical and existential suffering, a more spiritual perspective suggests that Job's pain stems from a profound spiritual loss [אלשיך]. According to this view, Job regrets that living through such intense hardship caused him to speak harshly against God. As a result of these outbursts, he lost all the spiritual merits he had built up over years of studying Torah and fulfilling the Commandments. He therefore questions why he was ever born, since his continued survival only caused his lifelong spiritual efforts to become completely empty and worthless.