Job 10:1-8
‘Then Job…said: “My soul is weary of my life…. I will say to God: ‘Are Your days like the days of man? Are Your years like man’s days?…. You know I am not wicked; and there is nobody that can deliver out of Your hand. Your hands have made me…. Yet, You destroy me!'”‘ Job 10:1-8.
Job breaks out perplexed and baffled — ‘my soul is weary of my life!’ What is it in God’s nature, that is the secret of Job’s sufferings? God’s hands once shaped him like a precious vessel. And now, He reduces him back to dust again!
Job was now weary of life. He had renounced all claim for its continuance. He prayed to the Author of his sufferings, that He would not permit him to die the death of the wicked. Indeed, Job’s soul was disgusted with his life.
Job was groping after the discovery of some characteristic or quality in God, to account for his own afflictions. For Job asked God if His life be brief — such as human life is? ‘Are Your days like the days of man? Are Your years like man’s days?’
Job asked God if His days are short, like those of men — so that He must hurry to punish the wicked. No, God is the Eternal One, and can therefore be patient and longsuffering!
Job continued: ‘You know that I am not wicked.’ Yes, God knew that Job was godly. But then, why was God now crushing Job in His hand? Job therefore objects: ‘Your hands have fashioned me, and made me! Yet, You are destroying me!’
Mention of God’s hand and even of His hands — suggests how, from of old, God’s hand made Job with lavish expenditure of skill in all his parts. Yet Job now brings the contradiction of God’s present dealing with him before the Lord — exclaiming ‘You destroy me!’
Does it give God pleasure, when He oppresses? Man is called the makings of the divine hands — as though he were elaborated by them. Because at his origin (Genesis 2:7), the continuation of which is the development in the womb (Psalm 139:15), he came into existence in a remarkable manner by the directly personal working of God.
Is God’s life like the brevity of man’s life? To God belongs absolute knowledge and absolute power. God knows even from the first, that Job will not appear as a guilty person. The Lord is at all events sure of Job, for nothing escapes the hand of God.
Yet all this still puzzled Job. For he said: ‘Your hands have formed and perfected me. Yet You have now swallowed me up!
Would You then gulp me down, and cause me to go back to dust? Would You terminate my existence? My soul is weary of my life. For You now destroy me – but You do not annihilate me!
