Job10
New American Standard
1“I am disgusted with my own life; I will express my complaint freely; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.
2I will say to God, ‘Do not condemn me; Let me know why You contend with me.
3Is it right for You indeed to oppress, To reject the work of Your hands, And to look favorably on the plan of the wicked?
4Do You have eyes of flesh? Or do You see as mankind sees?
5Are Your days like the days of a mortal, Or Your years like a man’s year,
6That You should search for my guilt And carefully seek my sin?
7According to Your knowledge I am indeed not guilty, Yet there is no one to save me from Your hand.
8‘Your hands fashioned and made me altogether, Yet would You destroy me?
9Remember that You have made me as clay; Yet would You turn me into dust again?
10Did You not pour me out like milk, And curdle me like cheese,
11Clothe me with skin and flesh, And intertwine me with bones and tendons?
12You have granted me life and goodness; And Your care has guarded my spirit.
13Yet You have concealed these things in Your heart; I know that this is within You:
14If I have sinned, You will take note of me, And will not acquit me of my guilt.
15If I am wicked, woe to me! But if I am righteous, I dare not lift up my head. I am full of shame, and conscious of my misery.
16And should my head be high, You would hunt me like a lion; And You would show Your power against me again.
17You renew Your witnesses against me And increase Your anger toward me; Hardship after hardship is with me.
18‘Why then did You bring me out of the womb? If only I had died and no eye had seen me!
19I should have been as though I had not been, Brought from womb to tomb.’
20Would He not leave my few days alone? Withdraw from me so that I may have a little cheerfulness
21Before I go—and I shall not return— To the land of darkness and deep shadow,
22The land of utter gloom like darkness itself, Of deep shadow without order, And it shines like darkness.”
Study Guide
Public-domain commentary and original-language notes for Job 10.
Chapter Summary
In this chapter: Job complains of his hardships. (1–7). He pleads with God as his Maker. (8–13). He complains of God's severity. (14–22).
vv1-7
Job, being weary of his life, resolves to complain, but he will not charge God with unrighteousness. Here is a prayer that he might be delivered from the sting of his afflictions, which is sin. When God afflicts us, he contends with us; when he contends with us, there is always a reason; and it is desirable to know the reason, that we may repent of and forsake the sin for which God has a controversy with us. But when, like Job, we speak in the bitterness of our souls, we increase guilt and vexation. Let us harbour no hard thoughts of God; we shall hereafter see there was no cause for them. Job is sure that God does not discover things, nor judge of them, as men do; therefore he thinks it strange that God continues him under affliction, as if he must take time to inquire into his sin.
vv8-13
Job seems to argue with God, as if he only formed and preserved him for misery. God made us, not we ourselves. How sad that those bodies should be instruments of unrighteousness, which are capable of being temples of the Holy Ghost! But the soul is the life, the soul is the man, and this is the gift of God. If we plead with ourselves as an inducement to duty, God made me and maintains me, we may plead as an argument for mercy, Thou hast made me, do thou new-make me; I am thine, save me.
vv14-22
Job did not deny that as a sinner he deserved his sufferings; but he thought that justice was executed upon him with peculiar rigour. His gloom, unbelief, and hard thoughts of God, were as much to be ascribed to Satan's inward temptations, and his anguish of soul, under the sense of God's displeasure, as to his outward trials, and remaining depravity. Our Creator, become in Christ our Redeemer also, will not destroy the work of his hands in any humble believer; but will renew him unto holiness, that he may enjoy eternal life. If anguish on earth renders the grave a desirable refuge, what will be their condition who are condemned to the blackness of darkness for ever? Let every sinner seek deliverance from that dreadful state, and every believer be thankful to Jesus, who delivereth from the wrath to come.
Key Words
חַי: alive; hence, raw (flesh); fresh (plant, water, year), strong; also (as noun, especially in the feminine singular and masculine plural) life (or living thing), whether literally or figuratively
עָזַב: to loosen, i.e. relinquish, permit, etc.
שִׂיחַ: a contemplation; by implication, an utterance
דָבַר: perhaps properly, to arrange; but used figuratively (of words), to speak; rarely (in a destructive sense) to subdue
מַר: bitter (literally or figuratively); also (as noun) bitterness, or (adverbially) bitterly
נֶפֶשׁ: properly, a breathing creature, i.e. animal of (abstractly) vitality; used very widely in a literal, accommodated or figurative sense (bodily or mental)
אָמַר: to say (used with great latitude)
אֱלוֹהַּ: a deity or the Deity
רָשַׁע: to be (causatively, do or declare) wrong; by implication, to disturb, violate
טוֹב: to be (transitively, do or make) good (or well) in the widest sense
Cross References
Job 10Slight verbal echo and deep thematic parallel to the wondrous, gradual fashioning of the human body in utero.
Supported by JFB
Contrasts Job's fear that God despises His own handiwork with the Psalmist's assurance of God's enduring care.
Supported by JFB
Identical phrase asserting the sovereign, absolute power of God: "neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand."
Supported by Matthew Poole
Uses the same physical imagery of God's hands making and fashioning a person, pleading for divine mercy.
Supported by Matthew Henry
Parallels Job's recurring bitter lamentation and desire that he had died in or immediately after the womb.
Supported by Matthew Henry, Matthew Poole
Identical desperate prayer to be spared and left alone to recover strength before passing away.
Supported by JFB
Contrasts human eyes that look only on outward appearances with God's search of the heart.
Supported by Matthew Henry, Matthew Poole
Echoes Job's complaint that God strictly tracks, marks, and searches out his microscopic, minute errors.
Supported by Matthew Poole
Illuminates Job's clay/potter imagery representing human frailty and God's absolute sovereign shaping of man.
Supported by Matthew Henry, JFB
Parallels the terrifying, graphic metaphor of God actively hunting and attacking the sufferer like a fierce lion.
Supported by Matthew Henry, JFB
Direct parallel in phrasing where Job expresses that his soul loathes and is weary of his life.
Supported by Matthew Henry, JFB
Contrasts Job's fear that God despises His work with his later hope that God will yearn for it.
Supported by JFB
Similar lamentation of God lying in wait and attacking the sufferer like a bear or a lion.
Supported by Matthew Henry
Job's consistent, grim description of death as a place of absolute finality from which none return.
Supported by Matthew Poole