Chapter Ten

Continuation of Job’s response to the speech of Bildad. 1–12. Job’s attempts to explain the cause of his suffering and their inadequacy. 13–19. New perplexities arising from this. 20–22. Request for mercy.

Job 10:1. My soul is weary of my life; I will give vent to my complaint; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul. Job 10:2. I will say to God: Do not condemn me; let me know why you contend with me? Job does not feel the desire to continue life (Job 9:21 and following); it is repugnant to him, arousing only complaints. To dispel, to destroy such a disposition and thereby to arouse the desire for life could the Lord by His answer to the question why Job suffers and is punished (cf. Job 3:20-23). But He appears only in the role of avenger, does not explain his guilt.

Job 10:3. Is it good for You to oppress, to despise the work of Your hands, while you smile on the counsel of the wicked? Job 10:4. Have You eyes of flesh, and do You see as a man sees? Job 10:5. Are Your days as the days of man, and Your years as man’s years, Job 10:6. that You search out my iniquity and seek out my sin, Job 10:7. although You know that I am not wicked, and there is none who can deliver me from Your hand? Vain too are the personal efforts of Job to comprehend the cause of the calamities that befell him and thereby to ease his grief. He knows no guilt for himself, but the suppositions he makes in order to clarify why the Lord punishes him cannot be recognized as satisfactory, since they are incompatible with the concept of God. First, it is inadmissible that the Lord would punish the creation of His hands (Gen 2:7; Ps 138:15) because it brings Him pleasure (v. 3). Such a supposition contradicts the divine love to which man owes his existence. Second, it is impossible to think that punishment is a result of error, ignorance (v. 4). It is inherent in one limited in mind, man, judging by appearance, but not to the all-knowing God, knowing the hearts of men (1 Sam 16:7; Sir 23:27-28). Finally, one cannot suppose that the life of the Lord is as short as human life and therefore He, fearing to miss the time for punishment, does not give Job’s sin to appear but deliberately seeks out his guilt and unjustly and without necessity subjects the innocent one to punishment before his time (v. 5–7).

Job 10:8. Your hands have made me and fashioned me altogether; will You then turn and destroy me? Job 10:9. Remember that You have made me like clay; and will You turn me to dust again? Job 10:10. Did You not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese, Job 10:11. clothe me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews, Job 10:12. grant me life and steadfast love, and Your care has kept my spirit? All the suppositions brought forward have no place and cannot have place. But in that case a new perplexity arises. As the first man created from clay, so also Job is the creation of God, the direct work of the Lord’s hands. By God’s will from human seed (“milk”) there began in the womb of his mother his organism, by God’s power there were created the various members one by one (“Your hands... have fashioned me altogether” – v. 8), and by that same power he was then made into a complete man (“clothe me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews,” v. 11; cf. Ps 138:13), over whom during the rest of his life God’s providence constantly watched (v. 12). And if now the Divine Creator destroys His creation (v. 8), much more, the object of His care and concern, then He performs an incomprehensible, unfathomable act of self-annihilation.

Job 10:13. Yet these things You hid in Your heart; I know that this was with You: Job 10:14. that if I sin, You mark it, and will not acquit me of my iniquity. Having shown His love to Job in the act of creation, God at the same time predetermined, established as a rule, not to forgive him even the smallest sin (Hebrew “hata” in contrast to great sins committed “with a bold hand” Num 15:30). How can one reconcile these two mutually exclusive principles: love and absence of forgiveness?

Job 10:15. If I am guilty, woe is me! And if I am righteous, I cannot lift up my head. I am full of disgrace and look upon my affliction. Job 10:16. Increase and grow against me, like a lion You hunt me and show again Your terrible power in me. Job 10:17. You renew Your witnesses against me and increase Your anger toward me; hard things come against me in succession. In such a relationship of God to Job the position of the latter proves to be completely hopeless. If he is guilty, he has no reason to expect mercy and forgiveness; if he is righteous, there is no grounds to “lift up his head” (v. 15), that is, to take courage. The latter is impossible because in the eyes of God Job remains a sinner deserving punishment. The evidence of such a relationship of the Lord to him is the increasingly growing disease, it is a witness to his guilt (Job 16:8), for which God pursues Job as a lion pursues its prey (Isa 38:13; Hos 5:14), in the infliction of suffering manifests His all-mightiness.

Job 10:18. Why then did You bring me out of the womb? Would that I had perished, no eye had seen me! Job 10:19. I would be as though I had not been, carried from the womb to the grave! Asserting that the Lord even at creation decided not to forgive him his sin (v. 13–14), Job does not understand how God could grant him life. The latter presupposes and requires love, but it was not, and the determination “not to leave sin without punishment” answers for this. There was no love, Job could not come into existence. So a new perplexity arises.

Job 10:20. Are not my days few? Then cease, and let me alone, that I may brighten up a little, Job 10:21. before I go, and I shall not return, to the land of darkness and the shadow of death, Job 10:22. a land of gloom, of deep shadow and disorder, where the light is as darkness. Troubled by all these unresolvable questions, having lost faith in God as a righteous, man-loving being, Job in view of his approaching death (“are not my days few?”) asks the Lord to withdraw from him, to stop manifestations of His anger (v. 15–17). Then he will die peacefully, not troubled by doubts. And this comparatively bright end will be compensation for the darkness that awaits him in the grave, where there is not even a trace of sunlight (“ophel” v. 22, cf. Exod 10:22), where reigns the shadow of death.