Albert Barnes Commentary Job 3:9

"Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark: Let it look for light, but have none; Neither let it behold the eyelids of the morning:" — Job 3:9 (ASV)

Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark — That is, be extinguished, so that it will be total darkness, a darkness not even relieved by a single star.

The word rendered “twilight,” נשׁף nesheph, properly means a breathing, and hence the evening, when cooling breezes “blow,” or gently breathe. It is used, however, to denote both the morning and the evening twilight, though here it probably means the latter.

He wishes that the evening of that night, instead of being illuminated in any way, should “set in” with total darkness and continue so. The Septuagint renders it, “night”.

Let it look for light, but have none — This personifies the night, representing it as looking out anxiously for some ray of light. This is a beautiful poetic image: the image of “Night,” dark, gloomy, and sad, anxiously looking out for a single beam or a star to break in upon its darkness and diminish its gloom.

Neither let it see the dawning of the day — The margin reads, more literally and more beautifully, “eyelids of the morning”.

The word rendered “dawning,” עפעפים ‛aph‛aphı̂ym, properly means “the eyelashes” (from עוּף ‛ûph, “to fly”), and it is given to them from their flying or fluttering. The word rendered “day,” שׁחר shachar, means the aurora, the morning.

The sun, when it is above the horizon, is called by poets the eye of day; and therefore, its earliest beams, before it has risen, are called the eyelids or eyelashes of the morning opening upon the world. This figure is common in the ancient Classics and occurs frequently in Arabic poets (see Schultens in the passage cited). Thus, in Sophocles’ Antigone, line 104, the phrase Ἁμέρας βλέφυρον Hameras blefaron occurs. So in Milton’s Lycidas:

“ - Ere the high lawns appeared
Under the opening eyelids of the dawn,
We drive afield.”

Job’s wish was that there might be no star in the evening twilight, and that no ray might illuminate that of the morning—that it might be enveloped in perpetual, unbroken darkness.