איוב, פרק י׳, פסוק י״ט

Deep suffering often brings a person to question the very value of their existence. Overwhelmed by intense pain, Job expresses a profound wish to completely erase his presence in the world or, at the very least, to have his life end the moment it began.

The primary approach among commentators is that Job yearns to be as though he had never been created. He imagines the fate of a stillborn child, taken directly from the womb to the grave, entirely spared from experiencing the harsh realities of life. This desire to be carried away to the grave is understood simply as a physical removal from the world [מצודת ציון], while it also carries the emotional weight of a desperate plea, expressing a deep longing to have been taken away before the suffering could even start [רש״י].

A deeper spiritual perspective explains why Job presents two distinct thoughts: never existing at all versus dying immediately upon birth. This duality is rooted in the idea of the soul's journey and its need for spiritual repair. Sometimes, even a brief life that ends right after birth serves a purpose, acting as a correction or the repayment of a spiritual debt through the cycle of reincarnation. With this in mind, Job lays out two possibilities. If dying inside the womb without ever entering the world offers no spiritual benefit to his soul, he wishes instead that he had been born and died right away. This fleeting existence would allow his soul to achieve its necessary repair without forcing him to endure a long life filled with pointless agony [אלשיך].