Job clearly understands no worse than his friends that there are no sinless people in the world (v. 4). He also understands that human life is short and, as a rule, joyless (vv. 1-2). That is why he asks God for mercy toward man (vv. 3, 5-6), because man can do nothing about his own sinfulness. Besides, man is mortal, his life is passing, and he has nothing to hope for (vv. 7-12). Job believes in the resurrection, and he would also like to believe that after the resurrection the situation will change radically (vv. 13-17). Job dreams of the day when God, bringing him out of Sheol, will free him from the power of evil and cleanse him from all sins. Then at last Job will be able to stand face to face with God, and his sinfulness, from which no one can completely free himself, will no longer darken his righteousness. But this hope clearly seems ghostly to Job; he understands that everything will be very different and that there is no hope of better things for him (vv. 18-22).
Such hopelessness against the background of faith in the possibility of resurrection seems strange. But this passage in the Book of Job clearly reflects the spirit of the age in which it was written. Of course, Judaism of the fifth-fourth centuries BC had not completely lost faith in the resurrection and the day of Judgment, just as it had not completely lost its messianism. But this perspective was evidently not very distinct in it. In the Judaism of that age, it most plausibly happened as it did in medieval Christianity, where, unlike the first centuries of Christian history, the expectation of the second coming of Christ was usually not very intense. Job could not have been unaware that Judgment awaited everyone at the end of time, and that the existing order of things was to be replaced by the messianic Kingdom. Yet this knowledge remained somewhat abstract for him, abstract enough that he does not even firmly and unambiguously connect the day of Judgment and the resurrection with the complete transformation of the human person and his cleansing from sin.
Such cleansing, even after the resurrection on the day of Judgment, seems to him an impossible dream. It is no wonder that Job's view of human life in general, and of his own life in particular, proves so pessimistic: outside the context of the messianic perspective in the fullness revealed to the prophets, man truly had nothing to count on before the face of God's eternity. Job understands this, but he cannot change anything. Indeed, the perspective of the Kingdom was revealed to the prophets as part of the revelation they received from God. For Job, however, the main revelation was still ahead, and without it there is no serious way to speak about such things as Judgment, resurrection, and the Kingdom; they will still remain no more than theological abstractions or beautiful fantasies. Job has no time for abstractions or fantasies. He is seeking the answer to the chief question of his life, and he has no time left for anything else.
