NOTES for Job 7:1-21
Lamenting his lot, Job addresses God with piercing words about what human life is really like. Chapter seven begins with Job's lament over a life poisoned throughout by the death that lies ahead. Are not a person's days, Job asks, like those of a hired labourer? Just as the labourer's work has a set term and he waits for it to end, so a person spends the whole of conscious life awaiting its end. And just as a slave grits his teeth and strives to finish his crushing forced labour, so Job drags out his days, awaiting relief. This is a very precise comparison: human perception is such that the cessation of suffering is the only positive thing we find in death. And when life is filled to the brim with suffering, death really does become a release.
It is important to compare Job's lament at the beginning of chapter seven with Eliphaz's ‘comforting’ speech, which sought to explain Job's suffering as God's way of correcting his sins. Job lives the present to the fullest possible extent, even though his present contains nothing but torment. The theory Eliphaz advances, by contrast, takes a person's spirit and thoughts away from the present: the theoretical sin for which the hand of the Most High punishes a person lies in the irreparable past; the correction towards which God leads that person lies in a distant future that seems unreal. In the present, the theory of punishment and correction leaves nothing but suffering. In theory, relief from that suffering is supposed to come from diverting one's thoughts from the present moment to the past and future. Yet the point is that human life takes place only ‘here and now’, in the present. Job is deeply aware of this, and he cries out for the truth and clarity he needs precisely ‘here and now’.
There are three things in human life that cannot be experienced in the past or the future, but only in the present: love, suffering and prayer. That is why Job does not reason about causes and consequences: he prays. His prayer is full of profound truth; such prayer is possible only in the wondrous closeness of the Invisible One. Job asks God to remember the brevity of his days. He appeals to God to stoop to his littleness, accepting that littleness without murmuring. Job's strong and truthful spirit, unbroken even by immeasurable suffering, accepts human smallness before God as a given. In general, this is characteristic of biblical faith, but not at all of human psychology as a whole. We strive too hard for greatness, too hard to ‘leave our mark’ on earth, to accept humbly the unsurpassed greatness of the Creator. Job is free of this desire to leave his tracks everywhere; his grief over life's fleeting nature finds expression not in a quest for earthly greatness, but in prayer: ‘I will not restrain my mouth...’
Job laments, but does not murmur against God; even when its form resembles murmuring, his prayer is infinitely far from it. He pours out his grief before God, even though, for Job—as also in the book's plot—his misfortune has come upon him precisely by the Creator's will. But God is one, and so there is simply no one else to whom human pain can be poured out. Most people in such a situation turn away from God; Job's faithfulness is expressed in his seeking justice from God himself.
‘Am I the sea... that you set a guard over me?’ Job exclaims. Is a person's torment proportionate to their own smallness? There is no strength left to live, because overcoming suffering is beyond human strength. What am I, that you value me so highly? If, as Eliphaz says, you really are punishing me and wish to correct me, am I worth such attention? Leave me alone! Job senses the unbearable difference in scale between humanity and God. In the same way Isaiah exclaims, ‘Woe is me, for I am lost!.. For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!’ In the same way Peter begs, ‘Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.’ The words ‘Leave me alone’ are not a request that God go away: they express an acknowledgement of God's greatness and human smallness.
Job's prayer makes plain how far the theory of punishment and correction falls short of a real person's standing before the real God. ‘What can I do to you, O watcher of men!’ What grief can a powerless human being bring to the Almighty? In these words, so outrageous to his pious friends, Job touches upon a great truth of faith. A mysterious answer to them may be found in the Lord's words through the prophet Micah: ‘O my people, what have I done to you? How have I burdened you? Answer me’ (Mic. 6:3). Betrayal of the Creator's love is indeed the cause of the suffering on the Cross that humanity inflicts on God. But Job is not guilty of this: he is faithful to God in well-being and in sorrow alike.
The authenticity of Job's faith and spiritual experience is confirmed by his finding a breach in the theory of punishment and correction. The real, living God is not as Eliphaz imagines him; the capacity to forgive is characteristic of the real God. And so Job prays to him, ‘Why not forgive my sin...’ Why not forgive me, when I am about to disappear!