Job 10 - Introduction

Job's new Appeal to God, in the form of an effort to discover what in the Divine Nature it can be that will explain his terrible sufferings

The chapter attaches itself closely to the last words of ch. 9, precisely as ch. 7 to the end of ch. 6. Ch. 9 ended with the expression of the feeling on Job's part of his own innocence, and at the same time of the feeling that God had determined to hold him guilty. Added to this was the feeling of his helplessness to make his innocence appear against God's power and majesty. After a slight pause, perhaps, these mixed feelings gather new volume in his mind and he breaks out, perplexed and baffled, my soul is weary of my life. Then commences an appeal unto God in which one supposition after another is hazarded as to what in God's nature it is that is the secret of Job's sufferings, each supposition being refuted by being seen to be in contradiction to God's true nature. The whole thus forms a very impassioned argument with God founded on His own nature.

First, Job appeals to God not to makehim guilty by mere arbitrary will, but if He have cause against him to reveal it, Job 10:2. Then with a strong feeling of his own innocence he asks if it be a pleasure to God to oppress and reject the just and smile upon the wicked? Can it be that God finds pleasure in this? Job 10:3. Then he wonders if God have eyes of flesh, subject to illusion and error, so that He mistakes the innocent for the guilty; or if He be short-lived like men and must gratify His vengeance on suspicion lest His victim should escape Him though in truth none of this could be, for He knewJob's innocence, and none could deliver from His hand, Job 10:4.

Then the mention of His "hands" suggests to Job, and he brings it before God, the strange contradiction in God's treatment of him His hands fashioned Him once like a precious vessel and now He reduces him to dust again! Job 10:8.

This contradiction vividly put in Job 10:8 is then enlarged upon. Job recalls God's remembrance to past times, how He wonderfully began his being in the womb, and with a careful and minute tenderness fashioned all his parts, forming him with a prodigal expenditure of skill; and then when a living man hedged him about with loving kindness and guarded his spirit with constant oversight, Job 10:9. The contradiction between this gracious guidance in the past and God's present treatment of him utterly baffles Job, and he leaps to the desperate conclusion that all that he now suffers had always been designed by God, and that even while expending His greatest skill upon him He had been cherishing this deep purpose of plaguing him. With an elaborate minuteness Job goes over this divine scheme, Job 10:13, and as he realizes it to himself in detailing it,

He finally cries out in despair, why God ever gave him life at all, Job 10:18? and begs for a little easing of his pain before he goes into the land of darkness, Job 10:20; concluding with some terrible touches concerning that gloomy land, where the light is as darkness, Job 10:22.