Job10
New International Version
1“I loathe my very life; therefore I will give free rein to my complaint and speak out in the bitterness of my soul.
2I say to God: Do not declare me guilty, but tell me what charges you have against me.
3Does it please you to oppress me, to spurn the work of your hands, while you smile on the plans of the wicked?
4Do you have eyes of flesh? Do you see as a mortal sees?
5Are your days like those of a mortal or your years like those of a strong man,
6that you must search out my faults and probe after my sin—
7though you know that I am not guilty and that no one can rescue me from your hand?
8“Your hands shaped me and made me. Will you now turn and destroy me?
9Remember that you molded me like clay. Will you now turn me to dust again?
10Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese,
11clothe me with skin and flesh and knit me together with bones and sinews?
12You gave me life and showed me kindness, and in your providence watched over my spirit.
13“But this is what you concealed in your heart, and I know that this was in your mind:
14If I sinned, you would be watching me and would not let my offense go unpunished.
15If I am guilty—woe to me! Even if I am innocent, I cannot lift my head, for I am full of shame and drowned in my affliction.
16If I hold my head high, you stalk me like a lion and again display your awesome power against me.
17You bring new witnesses against me and increase your anger toward me; your forces come against me wave upon wave.
18“Why then did you bring me out of the womb? I wish I had died before any eye saw me.
19If only I had never come into being, or had been carried straight from the womb to the grave!
20Are not my few days almost over? Turn away from me so I can have a moment’s joy
21before I go to the place of no return, to the land of gloom and utter darkness,
22to the land of deepest night, of utter darkness and disorder, where even the light is 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