NOTES for Job 10:2-3

²I will say unto God, Do not condemn me; shew me wherefore thou contendest with me.

³Is it good unto thee that thou shouldest oppress, that thou shouldest despise the work of thine hands, and shine upon the counsel of the wicked?

The most terrible thing for Job is an existential catastrophe, as a modern philosopher would call it. It had always been obvious to him that he is God's creation. God did not merely create him: He accompanies Job at every moment of his life. It would seem that with such relations one should already speak of something much deeper than mere human religiosity. In many ways that is true, if not for one "but."

Job is sure that God carefully tracks every righteous or sinful act of his and is ready to reward him for righteousness and punish him for sin. He is sure that evil appears in the world not by chance and that it is nothing other than punishment for sinners. That is why his own situation paralyzes him: the issue is not suffering as such, but the suffering of a righteous man, which for Job is a moral absurdity. By definition sinners are the ones who should suffer. And Job's friends only confirm this with all their arguments: it is not by chance that they keep returning to the theme of sin.

Meanwhile Job's ideas about righteousness and sin, about recompense for the righteous and sinners in this world, do not fit very well with his own relationship with God, at least as Job himself sees it. If God knows him, as they say, "inside and out," what is He waiting for? Or does He not know what Job is capable of, how righteous he is and how sinful? Job is precisely sure that God knows everything about him, and therefore prosperity as a reward for righteousness in life should be taken for granted. Or did God overlook something?

God is not at all going to play at rewards and punishments. For Him all such human accounts and calculations are like a sandbox in kindergarten: serious and deep relations with God cannot be built in a sandbox. And in God's world, when it comes to a person's relationship with God, the question "for what purpose?" is always more appropriate than the question "for what offense?" But Job himself does not yet see this contradiction between the desired quality of relations with God, where everything is grown-up, and the childish sandbox of God's "rewards" and "punishments," where candy alternates childishly with the strap. A moment will come when he sees it.

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For Job 10:1-22

¹My soul is weary of my life; I will leave my complaint upon myself; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.

²I will say unto God, Do not condemn me; shew me wherefore thou contendest with me.

³Is it good unto thee that thou shouldest oppress, that thou shouldest despise the work of thine hands, and shine upon the counsel of the wicked?

⁴Hast thou eyes of flesh? or seest thou as man seeth?

⁵Are thy days as the days of man? are thy years as man's days,

⁶That thou inquirest after mine iniquity, and searchest after my sin?

⁷Thou knowest that I am not wicked; and there is none that can deliver out of thine hand.

⁸Thine hands have made me and fashioned me together round about; yet thou dost destroy me.

⁹Remember, I beseech thee, that thou hast made me as the clay; and wilt thou bring me into dust again?

¹⁰Hast thou not poured me out as milk, and curdled me like cheese?

¹¹Thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh, and hast fenced me with bones and sinews.

¹²Thou hast granted me life and favour, and thy visitation hath preserved my spirit.

¹³And these things hast thou hid in thine heart: I know that this is with thee.

¹⁴If I sin, then thou markest me, and thou wilt not acquit me from mine iniquity.

¹⁵If I be wicked, woe unto me; and if I be righteous, yet will I not lift up my head. I am full of confusion; therefore see thou mine affliction;

¹⁶For it increaseth. Thou huntest me as a fierce lion: and again thou shewest thyself marvellous upon me.

¹⁷Thou renewest thy witnesses against me, and increasest thine indignation upon me; changes and war are against me.

¹⁸Wherefore then hast thou brought me forth out of the womb? Oh that I had given up the ghost, and no eye had seen me!

¹⁹I should have been as though I had not been; I should have been carried from the womb to the grave.

²⁰Are not my days few? cease then, and let me alone, that I may take comfort a little,

²¹Before I go whence I shall not return, even to the land of darkness and the shadow of death;

²²A land of darkness, as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as darkness.

Understanding that he has nothing left to lose, Job turns to God with a lengthy speech... Read more

Understanding that he has nothing left to lose, Job turns to God with a lengthy speech (v. 1). He says to God: why are You against me (v. 2)? After all, You are not a human being; You cannot be bribed. So why do the wicked turn out to be more successful than the righteous in Your world (vv. 3-4)? But Job's main question is different. He says to God: You know me and You know my righteousness, so what do You want from me? Why are You searching out sins in me (vv. 5-7)? Obviously Job, like his friends, understands very well that there are no sinless people in the world, and that righteousness means not sinlessness, but faithfulness to God, who of course can always find some sin in the person who follows Him and remains faithful to Him, some sin of which the righteous person can be accused.

But this kind of digging through another person's sins in order to find grounds for accusation is characteristic of a human being, and specifically of a wicked human being, but certainly not of God! You Yourself, Job says as he addresses God, made me what I am, and You preserved me (vv. 8-12). Of course Job understands very well that this gives him no right to sin and wickedness (vv. 13-14), for God does not make a person a sinner. But in Job's case this is not about a trial, for any trial presupposes an objective and unbiased examination of the substance of the charges brought against the accused. Meanwhile, Job does not really see any trial at all; from God's side he sees only punishment without trial. He says of himself: if I am guilty, woe to me! But even if I am not, that does not make it any easier (vv. 15-16). There is no trial, no arguments in favor of the accused are accepted, and the witnesses for the prosecution become more and more numerous (v. 17).

Of course, to religious consciousness God often appears not so much as a just judge as an unmerciful one. But Job wants to reach the God of revelation, and therefore he says to God: if this is so, then why was I born into the world at all? Why have I lived my life (vv. 18-19)? Even so, Job says, it is still not too late, for death is near (vv. 20-22). At first glance, we seem to have before us the same laments with which Job's first speech begins. But in this case he is speaking of something deeper and more important: Job is trying to reach the God of revelation by reminding Him of meaning, in this case the meaning of his own life, as well as the meaning of every human life in general.

Indeed, if God has no concern for a person, if He is not going to be merciful toward him, then why is a person needed on earth at all? Human life could have some meaning only if God were not simply a force indifferent to a person, but precisely a just Judge, ready to receive a person, even after the severest examination and the strictest assessment. But if God is ready simply to step over a person, whether sinner or righteous, human life loses every meaning, and Job understands this. He understands that life has meaning only before the God of revelation, not before the God of religion. And that is why he so wants to see God face to face, because then and only then will he be able to receive an answer to the question that torments him: who, after all, is his God?

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