Job 7:11-21

Job again gives utterance to his complaint. In the previous passage Job's tone, as in Job 3:11, had become quieter, and his complaint almost an elegy on human misery. But now he bursts forth again with the utmost violence of expression, and now, as he had not ventured to do in Job 3, directly attacks God. He will not refrain. Though God destroy him, he will speak (Job 7:11). He asks if he is the sea, fretting against the earth with its turbulent waves, or the sea-monster, the great dragon of the deep, once conquered by God long ago (Job 26:12; Isaiah 51:9 Revelation 21:1 *), but always liable to attempt a fresh assault upon God and the world. When Job seeks rest in sleep, God sends him awful dreams (Job 7:13 f.). He has no conception of second causes, and attributes the misery of his dreams directly to God. He wishes that he could die outright (Job 7:15). If only God would let him alone (Job 7:16). In Job 7:17 f. he bitterly parodies Psalms 8:4. The Psalmist in devout ecstasy speaks of the littleness of man, and the wonderful condescension of God, who has made him his vicegerent and lord of the creation. But Job thinks of God as the great Watcher of men (Job 7:12; Job 7:20), the Almighty Eye, always regarding human conduct to try and prove it according to its worth. This is precisely the same idea of God which we have already had from Eliphaz, the God who watches men and rewards or punishes them. But Eliphaz, like the Psalmist, glorified this conception of God. To Job in his present mood it seems nothing but darkness and terror, and he cries out against it. If religion is conceived as a strict moral order, which lays on man full responsibility for every action and impulse, it must crush him; the poet of Job anticipates Paul in recognising this truth. The above propositions are, however, as little the last word of the poet on the true nature of God, as his previous statements on the questions of life after death give his last judgment on the question of immortality, On the contrary, there is here merely the weighing of the possibility that Job's sufferings are the result of Divine repressive measures, and through the sarcastic conclusions drawn from it rather an indirectly negative than an affirmative answer (Duhm). In Job 7:19 Job pleads for a moment's respite. In Job 20 he suggests that even if he has sinned, his sin cannot have injured God, who is infinitely above aught that man can do to him. The inference is that God, instead of making Job, by watching him so, into a perpetual stumbling-block (mark) that always seems to be in His way, might simply forgive his sins. We see that Job is already moving from the idea of God as an Almighty Judge to the thought that at bottom His nature is pardoning love. Cf. Psalms 13:04, which makes it clear that if God be simply a Judge, fellowship between man and Him is impossible; if He is to be feared, i.e. if religion is to be possible, it can only be on a basis of forgiveness. The conclusion of Job 7:21 shows that Job is beginning to feel that the God who tortures him is not the real God, but only a passing phase (Psalms 30:5, mg.). When Job is dead at least God will want him. From the real God, who is love, it is not then too much to hope even the forgiveness of sin. The two thoughts that of the God who is great enough to pardon sin, and of the God who needs him are intimately connected together.

Job 7:15. The interpretation of the second clause, I choose death in preference to being this skeleton, is forced. Read, emending the text very slightly, I choose death rather than my pains.

Job 7:20. According to Jewish tradition the original text was a burden on Thee, which was altered by the scribes into a burden to myself. The tradition is probably correct, and the alteration has been made because the original text seemed irreverent.