NOTES for Job 7:1-21

Unlike his friends, Job is no longer afraid to ask God uncomfortable questions. A religious person usually confines communion with God within certain ritual frameworks that clearly define what one may ask God about and what one may ask Him for. Job has no time now for religious conventions. He had been religious too long, had trusted too long in a God whom, as it turns out, he never truly knew.

It would have been better, of course, to become better acquainted with Him under other circumstances, but these are the circumstances that exist. In any case, Job knows one thing for certain: from a religious point of view he has nothing with which to reproach himself. He has done everything he could, and even more. What is happening now does not fit into religious frameworks - and so down with those frameworks; let us speak plainly, without conventions and rituals.

Job asks God a direct question: what do You want from me? My death? Well then, if that is so, I am ready; no one lives forever on earth. But why did You give me the life I am living now? What meaning does it have? What am I supposed to see, to understand? You are before me, Job says to God, and I can neither live nor die, because You give me neither one nor the other. The most terrible thing for Job is precisely this meaninglessness: it turns out that he did not know his God at all.

And now, face to face with Him, Job understands nothing at all; the meeting with God has become for him a theater of absurdity. A nightmarish absurdity from which there is no exit. If God is like this, then what can one expect from Him? What can one expect from life at all? Perhaps then all of life is only absurdity and nightmare? Job's friends cannot help him in any way: for them, even putting the question this way sounds blasphemous. No wonder: they have not been in that theater of nightmarish absurdity where Job has been and where he continues to remain.

The issue here is not the illness as such, but precisely the complete illogic and meaninglessness of what is happening, at least from Job's point of view. One can understand and accept punishment for sin, but how can one understand and accept punishment for nothing? And if it is not punishment, then why is everything happening this way at all? Why to him, to Job? There is no answer, and this is the most terrible thing. Job needs an answer, but he will have to seek it himself: his friends, bound by religious fear, have turned out to be poor helpers.

Although he finds no support from Eliphaz, Job nevertheless continues his speech. He turns to God with the questions his friends were unable to answer. He says: my life is like the days of a hired worker; I await the end of my life as a hired worker awaits the end of his appointed term of service (vv. 1–3). There is neither peace nor joy nor rest in my life (vv. 4–6). Ahead lies Sheol, the world of shadows, to which people depart without return, and I shall vanish like a cloud; why, then, should I be silent (vv. 7–11)? Job understands that he has nothing to lose, and he wants to attain at least one thing: meaning. He wants to understand why and for what reason what happened to him has happened. He addresses God with a request unusual for a believer: leave me alone, withdraw from me, let me breathe freely (vv. 16–19).

In this case, however, such a request is not surprising, for Job associates everything happening to him, all his troubles and misfortunes, precisely with God, with God’s closeness and His intervention in Job’s life (vv. 12–15). If God’s closeness results in such troubles and misfortunes, would it not be better to keep away from Him? Job naturally understands that everything happening to him has some connection with his life and his sins. He understands that God wants something from him and perhaps wants to make him different, better than he was before. If so, Eliphaz is right: the day will come when the trials end and God’s closeness ceases to be unbearable.

But will Job live to see that day? Human strength is not limitless. To Job, God resembles a stern examiner or an implacable judge who peers intently at the accused, who in effect becomes a victim of His judgment (vv. 17–19). This gaze and this closeness are unbearable to Job. He does not deny his sinfulness, but he is already prepared to be reconciled to it if deliverance from it costs such effort. After all, human sinfulness in no way diminishes God’s greatness or stains His holiness. If that is so, why should He not leave alone someone who has little time left? Just forgive me, Job says to God, and let me die (vv. 20–21). Job evidently senses that God wants from him something of which he is utterly incapable and will not leave him until He has achieved His purpose. This prospect terrifies him, for in that case God’s presence becomes for the righteous man not a joy but a torment.

Despair brings Job to the limit, and he begins directly accusing the Creator of his troubles. Job does not want to live, but unwillingness to accept the gift of life is inseparably connected with rebellion against the Giver of that gift, whether the rebellion happens openly or secretly, consciously or unconsciously. Even the question addressed to God, what is man, that You value him so highly, recalling the solemn words of the psalm, "what is man, that You are mindful of him"(Ps 8:5), which mark the dignity of the human person as the summit of creation, is on Job's lips merely a request that God turn away from man. But in such a request one can also see a desire to turn away from God.

In Job's words one can also discern a request for forgiveness. True, it is expressed somewhat proudly, as if to say: if I am sinful, then forgive me; what can I do to You, being so much weaker? Job is possessed by intransigence, but the issue is not even that; rather, it is the widespread philosophy which Job, one may think, shares: "I am on my own with my sins, and God is on His own." But every sin is not only contrary to His will; it is also resistance to Him.