Job 6:8-13

2. In his wasted condition, death is desirable. (Job 6:8-13)

TEXT 6:8-13

8 Oh that I might have my request;

And that God would grant me the thing that I long for!

9 Even that it would please God to crash me;

That he would let loose his hand, and cat me off!

10 And be, it still my consolation,

Yea, let me exult in pain that spareth not,
That I have not denied the words of the Holy One.

11 What is my strength, that I should wait?

And what Is mine end, that I should be patient?

12 Is my strength the strength of stones?

Or is my flesh of brass?

13 Is it not that I have no help in me,

And that wisdom is driven quite from me?

COMMENT 6:8-13

Job 6:8Job's entreaty is that he be allowed to dieJob 3:11. No facile repentance can remove Job's sickness unto death. All that he desires is the healing of a hurried deathchp. 3.

Job 6:9Oh that God, would be willing to free this prisoner of pain (cf. Isaiah 53:10). The Hebrew which is translated let loose his hand is a verb used of setting prisoners freePsalms 105:20; Psalms 146:7.[86]

[86] Job has no awareness of guiltcompare with Lady MacBeth. The haunting, enslaving power of guilt is absent from Job's existential angst. Note also this powerful imagery in C. Fry's The Sleep of Prisoners. An enslaved spirit is more tortuously imprisoned than a shackled body. See Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich; The Gulag Archipelago; and compare with Paul's imprisonments and Bonhoeffer'S.

Job 6:10Job has one consolation that is that he has not betrayed God's trust; that is, even though called on to endure such severe punishment. No accusing conscience would impair his comfort in death (Driver). Job has been and still is an obedient servant to the Holy One of IsraelIsaiah 40:25; Hebrews 3:3.

Job 6:11Job can endure no more. Wait? For what? Eliphaz's promised blessings. What does the future hold for Job?

Job 6:12Men of stone and bronze feel nothing. Job is flesh and blood whose power to resist pain is all but exhausted.

Job 6:13This verse contains an emphatic interrogative particle as in Numbers 17:28, and the question form is to express strong avowal, which means that it is a fact that I do not have within me the power to help myself. Naturalistic humanism would not care for Job's pessimism. All human power to alleviate Job's suffering is already banished from him.[87] Job is not thinking of rescue from suffering but of the strength to bear the pain.

[87] For analysis of this question form, see M. Dahood, Biblica et Orientalia XVII, 1965,13; and E. F. Sutcliffe, Biblica, XXXI, 1950, 368ff.