Job 7:1-17

1 "Do not human beings have a hard service on earth, and are not their days like the days of a laborer?
2 Like a slave who longs for the shadow, and like laborers who look for their wages,
3 so I am allotted months of emptiness, and nights of misery are apportioned to me.
4 When I lie down I say, "When shall I rise?' But the night is long, and I am full of tossing until dawn.
5 My flesh is clothed with worms and dirt; my skin hardens, then breaks out again.
6 My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle, and come to their end without hope.
7 "Remember that my life is a breath; my eye will never again see good.
8 The eye that beholds me will see me no more; while your eyes are upon me, I shall be gone.
9 As the cloud fades and vanishes, so those who go down to Sheol do not come up;
10 they return no more to their houses, nor do their places know them any more.
11 "Therefore I will not restrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.
12 Am I the Sea, or the Dragon, that you set a guard over me?
13 When I say, "My bed will comfort me, my couch will ease my complaint,'
14 then you scare me with dreams and terrify me with visions,
15 so that I would choose strangling and death rather than this body.
16 I loathe my life; I would not live forever. Let me alone, for my days are a breath.
17 What are human beings, that you make so much of them, that you set your mind on them,

Job 7:1-17 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO JOB 7

In this chapter Job goes on to defend himself in an address to God; as that he had reason to complain of his extraordinary afflictions, and wish for death; by observing the common case of mankind, which he illustrates by that of an hireling, Job 7:1; and justifies his eager desire of death by the servant and hireling; the one earnestly desiring the shadow, and the other the reward of his work, Job 7:2; by representing his present state as exceeding deplorable, even worse than that of the servant and hireling, since they had rest at night, when he had none, and were free from pain, whereas he was not, Job 7:3-5; by taking notice of the swiftness and shortness of his days, in which he had no hope of enjoying any good, Job 7:6,7; and so thought his case hard; and the rather, since after death he could enjoy no temporal good: and therefore to be deprived of it while living gave him just reason of complaint, Job 7:8-11; and then he expostulates with God for setting such a strict watch upon him; giving him no ease night nor day, but terrifying him with dreams and visions, which made life disagreeable to him, and death more eligible than that, Job 7:12-16; and represents man as unworthy of the divine regard, and below his notice to bestow favours on him, or to chastise him for doing amiss, Job 7:17,18; and admitting that he himself had sinned, yet he should forgive his iniquity, and not bear so hard upon him, and follow him with one affliction after another without intermission, and make him the butt of his arrows; but should spare him and let him alone, or however take him out of the world, Job 7:19-21.

Footnotes 1

  • [a]. Or [as the thread runs out]
New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.