Job 7

TODAY’S ENGLISH VERSION

7 Human life is like forced army service,

like a life of hard manual labor,

2 like a slave longing for cool shade;

like a worker waiting for his pay.

3 Month after month I have nothing to live for;

night after night brings me grief.

4 When I lie down to sleep, the hours drag;

I toss all night and long for dawn.

5 My body is full of worms;

it is covered with scabs;

pus runs out of my sores.

6 My days have passed without hope,

passed faster than a weaver’s shuttle.

7 Remember, God, my life is only wind;

my happiness has already ended.

8 You see me now, but never again.

If you look for me, I-’ll be gone.

9-10 Like a cloud that fades and is gone,

a man dies and never returns; he is forgotten by all who knew him.

11 No! I can-’t be quiet!

I am angry and bitter. I have to speak.

12 Why do you keep me under guard?

Do you think I am a sea monster?

13 I lie down and try to rest;

I look for some help for my pain.

14 But youyou terrify me with dreams;

you send me visions and nightmares,

15 until I would rather be strangled,

rather die than live like this.

16 I give up. I am tired of living.

Leave me alone. My life makes no sense.

17 Why is man so important to you?

Why pay attention to what he does?

18 You inspect him every morning every minute. 19 Won-’t you look away long enough

for me to swallow my spit?

20 Are you harmed by my sin, you jailer?

Why use me for your target practice?

Am I that big a burden to you?

21 Can-’t you ever forgive my sin?

Can-’t you pardon the wrong I do? Soon I will lie down in the dust,

and I-’ll be gone when you look for me.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 7:1-21

Job compares life to three states of existence. What are they?

What was Nietzsche’s remark which relates to Job’s problem?

What is the difference between the expression human nature and human condition?

What general principle can be drawn from the sufferings of Job that has application to all of life?

How does Job compare himself to a slave in verse two?

How long did Job’s affliction last? Discuss.

Verse five was omitted by the LXX. Why?

Is Job contradicting himself when first he claims that life passes so slowly, and now complains in Job 7:6 that it is too brief?

How is life like a thread?

Does Job in verse seven deny the resurrection? Discuss.

What is the meaning of verse eight?

Give five characteristics of Sheol.

In this book death does seem to be final. Read Job 7:21; Job 10:21 and Job 14:10 and discuss.

Job has grown bitter and now for the first time he complains against God. Why?

What does Job mean by asking if he is a sea or a sea-monster?

Job can find no rest on his bed or in his sleep. Why? Who causes this?

Terror is a major word with Jobshow why.

Job suggests a form of death in Job 7:15. What is it?

… My days are vanitywhat is the meaning of this expression?

Job feels God has taken an overbearing inquisitiveness or an unrelenting surveillance in the affairs of man. Is this wrong? Discuss.

Job wishes God would leave him alone, but David wanted just the oppositePsa 33:18; Psalms 34:15. Why?

Job 7:1-10

5. God decrees what man receives. (Job 7:1-10)

TEXT 7:1-10

**7 Is there not a warfare to man upon earth?

And are not his days like the days of a hireling?

2 As a servant that earnestly desireth the shadow,

And as a hireling that looketh for his wages:

3 So am I made to possess months of misery,

And wearisome nights are appointed to me.

4 When I lie down, I say,

When shall I arise, and the night be gone? And I am full of tossings to and fro onto the dawning of the day.

5 My flesh is clothed with worms and clods of dust;

My skin closeth up, and breaketh out afresh.

6 My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle.

And are spent without hope.

7 Oh remember that my life is a breath:

Mine eye shall no more see good.

8 The eye of him that seeth me shall behold me no more;

Thine eyes shall be upon me, but I shall not be.

9 As the cloud is consumed and vanisheth away,

So he that goeth down to Sheol shall come up no more.

10 He shall return no more to his house,

Neither shall his place know him any more.**

COMMENT 7:1-10

Having done such a thing there is loneliness which cannot be borne, PabloFor Whom The Bell Tolls

**Job 7:1**Job’s friends reject his appeal. He then ceases to address them, as he returns to his lament. He compares life in general to forced military service, to the work of a day laborer, and to simple slavery, three wretched states of existence.[94] Job vehemently retorts to Eliphaz’s easy optimismJob 5:17 ff. Job believes in the validity of Nietzsche’s remark: Great problems are in the streets. Does the human condition consistently reveal a basic absurdity as well as an implacable nobility? Job’s condition is always the stuff of human revolt, not only against social institutions but ultimately against God. In western thought, men have long talked of human nature, but after the revolutions of the 18th-19th centuries in the physical, biological, and behavioral sciences, men began to talk of the human condition,[95] which could be modified through the application of the scientific method. Here lies the challenge of our contemporary JobIs a life of happiness through peace, prosperity, and progress possible, or is life really absurd? Twentieth century men will not take lightly to any naive suggestions which are grounded in the heresy of Utopia. We live, like Job, in a world which experiences the inveteracy of evilMar 7:21-23. We know that Dostoevsky is speaking of all of us in his Notes from Underground. A man will often, without rhyme or reason, do things which are irrational and absurd. Man has a passion to destroy. This passion, Dostoevsky exposes in his reflections on the Crystal Palace which was erected in London in 1851 to celebrate the Great Exhibition of Science. He foresees the coming clouds of totalitarian tyrannies (cf. America’s 1876 centennial and 1976 Bi-Centennial celebrations).[96] Job understands that his experience, while exceptional in the intensity of his suffering, is typical in the fact of suffering. The word translated hireling is used of a laborer, and a mercenary soldierJer 46:21. The imagery of warfare (Numbers 1:3; 1 Samuel 28:1) and hard work of one trapped in ceaseless toil are fused in Job’s lament.

[94] See M. David, Revue philosophique, 147, 1957, 341-49. It is a striking parallel to existentialist visions of life, Job comes to see that acceptance of his world must be based on other than normal grounds based in empirical justice. Nahum N. Glatzer, The Dimensions of Job (New York: Schocken Books, 1969); and C. G. Jung, Answer to Job (New York: Meridian Books, 1960), speaks of the dark face of God. Glatzer distinguishes between Judaic, Christian, and Humanist traditions in Job interpretation; much current interest in the Book of Job comes from the Existentialist, both theistic and atheistic, tradition.

[95] See Hanna Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: paperback); and Social Theory from Hegel and Marx to the Frankfort School of Social Research (Frankfort, Germany) which is the origin of much Neo-Marxist theory of revolutionliberation. Is man the captain of his own fate? or is Camus correct in asserting that man is an eternal rock-pusher (Myth of Sisyphus), and that analysis of our contemporary intellectual malady requires the recognition of the absurdity of human life? The secret complicity that joins the logical and the everyday to the tragic is a fundamental theme of Kafka, Metamorphosis.

[96]The contemporary preoccupation with evil and pervasive meaninglessness stems from the developments in 19th century thought. Hegel reflects on God’s wisdom and righteousness. The question of God’s justice is bound up with the question of his purposefulness. Only if nature-history will ultimately realize God’s purposefulness (Eschatology) can we speak of God as righteous. In contrast, Gilbert Murray claims not that God is righteous but that He is Beyond Good and Evil. Nietzsche criticized a believer’s acceptance of God as being a relinquishment of personal freedom. Thus the freedom thesis enters through the door of atheism, a la Sartre, et al. R. Otto also denies that the final Chapter s in Job intend … to suggest… teleological reflections or solutions (Glatzer, The Dimensions of Job, p. 277).

**Job 7:2In Mesopotamia it was assumed that everyone (not in high political lineage) was a slave and servant of the gods. Every slave was compelled to work the long and hot days without respiteMat 20:12. They longed for the decline of the sun and the cooling breezes of the evening. The slave[97] received wages every dayDeu 24:15, which was his endurance motive. To withhold his pay was prohibitedLev 19:13; Malachi 3:5; Romans 4:4; **1 Corinthians 3:8; 1 Timothy 5:18; James 5:4.

[97] For exhaustive analysis of slavery in the ancient Near East, see R. deVaux, Ancient Israel (New York, pp. 80-90) with excellent bibliography; the excellent studies of Lindhagen, The Servant Motif in Old Testament; and Scott Bartchy on Slavery in the Graeco-Roman milieu of the New Testament. Bartchy’s work was originally a Harvard Ph.D. thesis.

**Job 7:3**Job now turns from contemplating man’s universal condition to his own affliction. Months[98] of vanity (Hebrew show may mean emptiness, vanity, or moral evilJob 11:11; Job 31:5) and nights of wearisome anguish. When will the months pass away?

[98] From this allusion to months, Rabbi Aqiba assumed that Job’s suffering lasted a year (Mishnah, -Eduyot Job 2:10; The Testament of Job says that he suffered seven years.

**Job 7:4**The night, like the months, are long (middahto measurebe extended, cf. Einstein’s relativity thesis and contemporary man’s preoccupation with time.) Killing time before time kills us, e.g. leisure, play, vacations, etc., and the quality of our lived time (Dilthey’s Erlebnis).[99] Job tosses and turns all nighthis Long Day’s Journey Into Night. There is no relief even from the dawning (nasheph) of the day. Nasheph means morning light in contrast to ereb, evening twilight. Acute discomfort enslaves this vain searcher for peace. Even his dozing invites diabolic nightmares (Job 7:14). Unabating miseryOh, come sweet Death! The grave is no darker than his nights of loneliness and despair.

[99] Note the significance of timeand reality in the physical and biological sciences in contrast to the humanities and behavioral sciences, cf. quality of daily existence and our existential-phenomenological response to time. See the late M. Heidegger’s Being and Time; S. M. Cahn. Fate. Logic, and Time (Yale University Press); Caponigri, Time and Ideas (University of Notre Dame Press; Jiri Zeman, ed., Time in Science and Philosophy (New York: Am. Elsevier Pub.); and O. Cullinann, Christ and Time (Westminster Press).

**Job 7:5**Job’s ulcers are repulsive to the sight and smell. His skin is covered with dirty scabs filled with worms. The scabs break open and run with pus.[100]

[100] This verse is omitted by the LXX and others. This is unnecessary at best. See Dhorme, Job, p. 102; and J. Weingreen, Vetus Testamentum, IV, 1954, 56ff.

**Job 7:6**Is Job contradicting himself when first he claims that life passes so slowly (of course, in his condition the psychology of suffering is imperative for our understanding his statements), and now complains that it is too brief? Here we note a play on the words for hope (tiqwah) and thread. The same word is used in Joshua 2:18; Joshua 2:21 for the scarlet thread which identified Rahab’s house. As the weaver’s shuttle runs out of thread, so now Job’s existence is running out of hope. Swift as a weaver’s shuttle fleet our days, Browning.

**Job 7:7**The pathos of this pitiful cry penetrates into the depths of every sensitive person. But will God hear? He has turned once more from his tormenting counselors directly to God. Life is at best transient (Psalms 78:39; Isa. 51:29; Jeremiah 5:13; Ecclesiastes 1:14; James 5:13 ff), and he will never again see prosperity and happiness. Until Tolkien’s eucatastrophe in the form of our Lord’s resurrection, neither Job nor any of his contemporaries could hope beyond suffering and the grave. Rashi observes that here Job denies the resurrection. But in Job 19:24-27 he reaches beyond the despair-creating view of man’s finitude and of the finality of death to something better than Sheol. Note contemporary man’s concern with death and his multiplication **of **his futile efforts to generate new men and new societies, where all are happy and prosperous.

**Job 7:8Time is too short to expect (hope for) his restoration. God alone will prevail.

Job 7:9**Vanish away translates Hebrew which means comes to an end. Sheol (see Kittel article) is described as a place from which no traveler has returnedJob 10:21; a land of darkness and despairJob 10:21 ff; as deepJob 11:8; place where the dead are hiddenJob 14:13; place for everyoneJob 3:19 and Job 30:23. Only resurrection can break the spell of this despair.

**Job 7:10**The theme of the finality of death reoccurs several timesJob 7:21; Job 10:21; Job 14:10; Job 14:12; Job 14:18-22; Job 17:13; Job 16; Job 19:25-27; also Psalms 103:16 b for the second line.

Job 7:11-15

6. He finds no mercy, neither from God or from his friends. (Job 7:11-15)

**TEXT 7:**11-15

**11 Therefore I will not refrain my month;

I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.

12 Am I a sea, or a sea-monster,

That thou settest a watch over me?

13 When I say, My bed shall comfort me,

My couch shall ease my complaint;

14 Then thou scarest me with dreams,

And terrifiest me through visions:

15 So that my soul chooseth strangling,

And death rather than **these my bones.

COMMENT 7:11-15

**Job 7:11**For the first time, Job charges God with being his tormentor. Bitterness oozes out of the disease of soul sickness.

**Job 7:12**God has set limits to the seaGen 1:10 and watches that it does not violate its appointed boundary. Do I, cries Job, need to be watched like that great inanimate ocean?[101] God is creator of the universe and, thus, Lord of the waters.[102] Job reminds God that he cannot threaten Him. The word translated A. V. set a watch means guard, or perhaps with Dahood, a muzzlePsa 39:2; Psalms 68:23; and Psalms 141:3. God, you are trying to put a muzzle on me, so I will be silent.

[101] Buttenweiser’s (The Book of Job) claim that this verse refers to the Babylonian creation myth is unsubstantiated and unnecessary in order to understand this verse, neither is it necessary to compare this verse with the West Semitic Ugaritic myths; but see for both I. B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton, 1955).

[102] For discussion of the claim of the influence of the Ugaritic creation myth, see M. Dahood, Journal of Biblical Literature, LXXX, 1961, 270ff; O. Kaiser, Die mythische Bedeutung des Meeres in Agypten, Ugarit und Israel, Beihefte zur Zeitschriftfur die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 78, 1959.

**Job 7:13**See Eliphaz’s description of his nightmareJob 4:12-16, and Job’s discussion of his restless tossingJob 7:4.

**Job 7:14**Job accuses God of causing his nightmares. Terrify is a major word in Job’s theology, where it occurs in intensive form eight, out of the total of thirteen, times in the entire Old Testament.

**Job 7:15**This verse means that my soul prefers choking, my bones prefer death.[103]

[103] N. M. Sarna, Journal of Jewish Studies, 6, 1955, 109.

Job 7:16-21

7. To God he addresses some difficult questions. (Job 7:16-21)

TEXT 7:16-21

**16 I loathe **my life; **I would not live alway:

Let me alone; for my days are vanity.

17 What Is man, that thou shouldest magnify him,

And that thou shouldest set thy mind upon him,

18 And that thou shouldest visit him every morning,

And try him every moment?

19 How long wilt thou not look away from me,

Nor let me alone till I swallow down my spittle?

20 If I have sinned, what do I unto thee, O thou watcher of men?

Why hast thou set me as a mark for thee, So that I am a harden to myself?

21 And why dost thou not pardon my transgression, and take away mine iniquity?

For now shall I lie down in the dost; And thou wilt seek me diligently, but I shall not be.**

COMMENT 7:16-21

**Job 7:16I **loathe can be connected with the previous verse, as my life is not in the Hebrew text. MeaningI despise death more than my pain.[104] Vanity is the same word translated vanity of vanities in Ecclesiastes 1:2.

[104] See Dhorme, Job, p. 107.

**Job 7:17-18**Here we note a parody of Psa 8:4 ff (Hebrews 2:6). We encounter strong irony in Job’s words set thy mind upon or pay attention. God, why are you devoting so much unfriendly attention to man in general, and specifically to Job? Is this divine providence? Pope describes this as overbearing inquisitiveness and unrelenting surveillance,[105] Job 23:10; Zechariah 13:3; Psalms 17:3visittest parallel (note this is true of Israel, Jesus, the Suffering Servant, and Christians) in the temptation narratives.

[105] Pope, Job, Anchor, p. 62; also J. Hempel, Forchungen and Fonchritte, Vol. 35 (Berlin, 1961), p. 123, for analysis of surveillance theme.

**Job 7:19**Job feels that he cannot get away from God’s hostile eye, even for a moment. Compare Job’s experience and David’SPsa 33:18; Psalms 34:15. The idiomatic expression Let me swallow my spittle means wait, or let me alone for a moment.

**Job 7:20**Surely Job is not that important to God that He should watch over him. Even if Job admits that he has sinned, he has not hurt God commensurate with the suffering with which Job has been inflicted. The word translated mark (only found here in the Old Testament) is not a target, but something which one strikes1 Kings 2:25. Job is weary of being a mark for God’s hostile action that life (burdenmassa) has become an intolerable malaise.

**Job 7:21**Even inadvertent sin does not deserve all the inflicted pain which was fallen to Job’s lot. Even if God forgives, it will be too late. Job will be dead. Again the pessimism that only resurrection can shatter. Godseek me (from noun meaning dawn or early)Proverbs 8:17. Jeremiah speaks of God rising up early to send the prophets to IsraelJer 7:13; Jeremiah 7:25; Jeremiah 25:4. Job maintains that God will in the end realize His mistake, but it will be too late. Throughout Job maintains belief in a creator-redeemer God of Justice, Holiness, and Love, while attacking Him for cruelty and inhuman threat.[106]

[106] The twentieth century has and continues to express deep unbelief regarding the Christian view of God. Without question the fundamental reason is the intensification of injustice, suffering, evil, and general cultural crisis. See my syllabus Discovering the Christian Mind (Apologetics-Evidences); and Martin Marty, Varieties of Unbelief (New York: Doubleday); Jas. Collins, God in Modern Philosophy (Chicago: Regnery, 1967); and S. Schrey, L-‘atheisme Contemporain (Paris, 1964).