Job 7: 1 - 21
Boxed In
1 “Is there not a time of hard service for man on earth? Are not his days also like the days of a hired man? 2 Like a servant who earnestly desires the shade, and like a hired man who eagerly looks for his wages, 3 So I have been allotted months of futility, and wearisome nights have been appointed to me. 4 When I lie down, I say, ‘When shall I arise, and the night be ended?’ For I have had my fill of tossing till dawn. 5 My flesh is caked with worms and dust, my skin is cracked and breaks out afresh. 6 “My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and are spent without hope. 7 Oh, remember that my life is a breath! My eye will never again see good. 8 The eye of him who sees me will see me no more; While your eyes are upon me, I shall no longer be. 9 As the cloud disappears and vanishes away, so he who goes down to the grave does not come up. 10 He shall never return to his house, nor shall his place know him anymore. 11 “Therefore I will not restrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul. 12 Am I a sea, or a sea serpent, that You set a guard over me? 13 When I say, ‘My bed will comfort me, my couch will ease my complaint,’ 14 Then You scare me with dreams and terrify me with visions, 15 So that my soul chooses strangling and death rather than my body. 16 I loathe my life; I would not live forever. Let me alone, for my days are but a breath. 17 “What is man, that You should exalt him, that You should set Your heart on him, 18 That You should visit him every morning, and test him every moment? 19 How long? Will You not look away from me, and let me alone till I swallow my saliva? 20 Have I sinned? What have I done to You, O watcher of men? Why have You set me as Your target, so that I am a burden to myself? 21 Why then do You not pardon my transgression, and take away my iniquity? For now I will lie down in the dust, and You will seek me diligently, but I will no longer be.”
Have you ever felt like God has boxed you into a deep pit and you cannot get out? If you ever have, then welcome to the club. We are going to hear from the founder of our sad state. He will relate to those of us the exact feelings and despair that we have had or are currently going through. I want to say up front that we must not at any time to blame God for any problems that is going on in our lives. We all have to remember that we are all a work in progress.
Secondly, we live in a very difficult time. We have the temptation to taking any possible direction or choice in order to relieve our problems. Many run to a doctor to get drugs, err I mean medication.
You have heard I am sure of people who are bi-polar. Sometimes we accept things without knowing the real meaning. Bi-polar means we have ups and downs in our lives which are somewhat like a roller coaster. Some people however have a hard time with the dip of their own personal roller coaster. This is referred to a manic bi-polar which can be a very serious condition. In this condition you have to keep a close eye on your loved one because this could lead to suicide due to a person being so low that they want out no matter what. We see that our brother Job is in such a state yet it has been clear as our Holy Spirit has informed us that Job did not want to take his own life in order to get out of the physical and mental pain.
In this chapter Job goes on to express the bitter sense he had of his calamities and to justify himself in his desire of death. He will then complain to himself and his friends of his troubles, and the constant agitation he was in. Ultimately he will turn to God and pours out his heart to Him.
1 “Is there not a time of hard service for man on earth? Are not his days also like the days of a hired man?
Job is here excusing what he could not justify, even his inordinate desire of death. Why should he not wish for the termination of life, which would be the termination of his miseries? To enforce this reason he argues about the general condition of man upon earth: "He is of few days and full of trouble’. Our time on earth is limited and short. As it says in the Bible it is but a vapor.
Job states his dismay in a question, ‘Is not the life of man a place of trial upon earth?" I believe the simple sentiment which the writer wished to convey is this: Human life is a journey in coming to know and trust our Master, The Lord Jesus Christ. When the Temple was being constructed all the work of preparing it such as chiseling the huge stones was done outside the city. Afterwards all was brought into the city and erected. It is a good example of how the Lord develops us for Eternity as we are being prepared outside heaven while on earth. ; Therefore you can see how every day and place is a time and place of exercise to form us for our eternal life. Here is the exercise, and here we experience the warfare.
Don’t forget that the world is cursed by our Holy God. Our condition during our time here is a time of warfare, and as the days of a hireling. We are to look upon ourselves in this world as the scripture reveals as soldiers, exposed to hardship and in the midst of enemies. Have you ever heard that we are in the Lord’s army?
In addition see that we are as ‘day-laborers’ that have the work of the day to do in its day and must make up their account at night.
2 Like a servant who earnestly desires the shade, and like a hired man who eagerly looks for his wages
In his thinking Job’s wish for death was similar to a poor servant or hireling that is tired with his work and wishes for the shadows of the evening, when he shall receive his pay and go home to rest
If you look again at Job’s cry you understand that he is not at all talking about work. He is using this fact to explain his desired for death. His point is that as a servant earnestly desires the shadow of night, so and for the same reason he earnestly desire death. Hear his complaint.
3 So I have been allotted months of futility, and wearisome nights have been appointed to me.
Job felt that all his days were useless, and had been so for quite awhile. He was wholly taken off from being able to do anything worthwhile. Every day was a burden to him, because he was in no capacity of doing well.. He could not fill up his time with anything that would turn to practical value. This he calls possessing months of vanity,
If you look back in Genesis after Adam and Eve fell what was the curse the Lord put on Adam? It was to work. It very much increases the affliction of sickness and age, to a good man, that he is thereby forced from his usefulness.
I use to work for the Postal Service. I was a supervisor of the letter carriers in Trenton New Jersey. One of the older carriers fell off a porch was delivering the mail. He was entitled up to 45 days of full pay to recuperate. One day I received a call from his doctor. I told the doctor that the Postal Service would pay the man his full salary for 45 days then after that if he is not able to come back he would be out on workers compensation which paid I believe 65 percent of his salary. The doctor told me that he wasn’t calling about the man’s pay. He wanted me to put the man back to work even though he was in a cast because his condition was worsening by not being back at work. So, I brought the guy back answering phones and he was a happy camper and recovered.
4 When I lie down, I say, ‘When shall I arise, and the night be ended?’ For I have had my fill of tossing till dawn.
The night was no relief to Job; it was only a continuance of all his anxiety and labor. Nothing can better depict the state of a man under continual afflictions, which afford him no respite, his days and his nights being spent in constant anguish, utterly unable to be in any one posture, so that he is continually changing his position in his bed, finding ease nowhere: thus, as he expresses it, he is full of tossing.
When you go through something like this doesn’t it seem like the clock isn’t moving. You dose off for a little while and you think it has been hours and when you look at the clock about 15 minutes have gone by and now you are fully awake again. Those that are in great uneasiness, through pain of body or anguish of mind, think by changing sides, changing places, changing postures, to get some ease; but, while the cause is the same within, it is all to no purpose; it is but a resemblance of a fretful discontented spirit, that is ever shifting, but never at ease.
5 My flesh is caked with worms and dust, my skin is cracked and breaks out afresh.
I work with some people that if you showed them a person who is displaying the same physical ailment that Job has they would be sick. The bible tells it like it is. It doesn’t hold back. Job’s sores bred worms; the scabs would fall off at random times after any movement or by itching. Then because of this his skin would break open again causing intense pain.
6 “My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and are spent without hope.
In almost every nation the whole of human existence has been compared to a web; and the principle of life, through the continual succession of moments, hours, days, weeks, months, and years, to a thread woven through that web.
Job represents the thread of his life as being spun out with great rapidity and about to be cut off. He thought he had no reason to expect a long life, for he found himself declining fast.
Job thought his days ran swiftly because he thought he should soon be at his journey’s end; he looked upon them as good as spent already, and he was therefore without hope of being restored to his former prosperity.
The prophet Isaiah uses the same figure, Isa 38:12 : “My life span is gone, taken from me like a shepherd’s tent; I have cut off my life like a weaver. He cuts me off from the loom; from day until night You make an end of me
7 Oh, remember that my life is a breath! My eye will never again see good.
His expectation of any future good was at an end; hope of the alleviation of his miseries no longer existed. The hope of the future again being good to us is the reason we persist in pushing forward in our lives. If we take a serious inventory and realize that in most likelihood that is not, there is despair which will lead to the desire to quit.
He recommends himself to God as an object of his pity and compassion, with this consideration, that he was a very weak frail creature, his abode in this world short and uncertain, his removal out of it sure and speedy, and his return to it again impossible and never to be expected—that his life was wind, as the lives of all men are, noisy perhaps and blustering, like the wind, but vain and empty, soon gone, and, when gone, past recall.
8 The eye of him who sees me will see me no more; while your eyes are upon me, I shall no longer be.
Our Holy Supreme Creator God can easily, and in a moment, put an end to our lives, and send us to another world. I just read today of this beautiful 34 year old successful woman who died of a stroke. When we are once removed to another world, we must never return to this. There is constant passing going on yet as you well know there is no coming back. We therefore see that Job is saying "Therefore, Lord, kindly ease me by death, for that will be a perpetual ease. I shall return no more to the calamities of this life.’’
9 As the cloud disappears and vanishes away, so he who goes down to the grave does not come up.
As the cloud is dissipated, so is the breath of those that go down to the grave. As that cloud shall never return, so shall it be with the dead; they return no more to sojourn with the living. When we are dead we are gone, to return no more,
10 He shall never return to his house, nor shall his place know him anymore.
You have heard of the statement, ‘You can’t take it with you.’ We see this truth displayed in this verse. Others will take possession of our homes and keep it till they also resign to another generation. Glorified saints shall return no more to the cares, and burdens, and sorrows of their house; nor damned sinners to the gaieties and pleasures of their house. Their place shall no more know them, no more own them, have no more acquaintance with them, nor be any more under their influence. It concerns us to secure a better place when we die, for this will no more own us.
11 “Therefore I will not restrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.
Job, now finding himself near expiring, hastens as much to make his complaint as if he had been to make his last will and testament or as if he could not die in peace until he had given vent to his passion. Here is a great truth which we need to sink down deep in our thoughts. When we have but a few breaths to draw before our time is up, we should spend them in the holy gracious breathings of faith and prayer, not in the noisome noxious breathings of sin and corruption. It is better to die praying and praising than die complaining and quarrelling.
12 Am I a sea, or a sea serpent, that You set a guard over me?
The same word appears as "the great dragon" in Ezekiel 29:3: “I am against thee, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers, which hath said, My river is mine own, and I have made it for myself.” Here the Pharaoh is pictured as clutching, possessive dragon. Job is asking: Am I as dangerous as the sea that I should be encompassed about with barriers, lest I should hurt mankind? Am I like an ungovernable wild beast or dragon, that I must be put under locks and bars?’ The meaning is sufficiently plain. Job was hedged about and shut in with insuperable difficulties of various kinds; he was entangled as a wild beast in a net; the more he struggled, the more he lost his strength, and the less probability there was of his being extricated from his present situation.
The sea and monsters of the deep are ready allegories for the deep dark recesses of the soul: We read in Psalm 69:1-2 “Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my soul. I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing: I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me”
We are very apt, when we are in affliction, to complain of God and his providence, as if he lay more restraints upon us that there is occasion for; whereas we are never in heaviness but when there is need, nor more than the necessity demands. We learn in the book of 1 Corinthians 10 verse 13 this, “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.”
If you have ever experienced parenthood then you can relate to this scripture. In most all cases after you bring your first child home the baby is kept in your bedroom. However, at a certain point in time you now feel that your child should be moved to his or her own bedroom. Now do you think you little one is happy to get their own bedroom? He or she is going to let you know that they are not a happy camper to be thrown out of your bedroom. But you know it is for the best that this must happen. As most loving parents you place the child and put up with its crying. However, you are at the door and if needed would come running to your child. This is what the scripture is telling us. Our Lord has His way of teaching us and stretching us. We do not like it but it is for our own good. And like the Greatest Most Perfect Parent, He Is there at the door to come and rescue us if the need arises.
13 When I say, ‘My bed will comfort me, my couch will ease my complaint,’ 14 Then You scare me with dreams and terrify me with visions, 15 So that my soul chooses strangling and death rather than my body
There is no doubt that Satan was permitted to haunt Job’s imagination with dreadful dreams and terrific appearances; so that, as soon as he fell asleep, he was suddenly roused and alarmed by those appalling images. He needed rest by sleep, but was afraid to close his eyes because of the horrid images which were presented to his imagination.
Sleep will for a time give some relief; it usually does so; it is appointed for that end; many a time it has blessed us, and we have awaked refreshed and with new vigor. When it is so we have great reason to be thankful; but it was not so with poor Job.
Instead of comforting him, his time of trying to sleep caused him terror. Instead of easing his complaint, his time in bed added to it; for if he dropped asleep, he was disturbed with frightful dreams, and when those awaked him still he was haunted with dreadful apparitions. This was it that made the night as unwelcome and wearisome to him as it was. Poor Job made the mistake of considering Satan’s representations for the terror of God being set in array against him.
Can you see how Job is in such unbearable anguish: “my soul chooseth strangling”. Strangling was considered a cruel death. Food killed by strangling was forbidden by Jews, as cruelty was against God's law. The prohibition was sufficiently important to the leaders of the early church that they forbid it to Gentile Christians (Acts 15:20 & 29). While he may be dramatic, Job legitimately feels like he has been backed into a corner by God. In fact, Satan has him penned in. Job has not learned how to get around Satan.
16 I loathe my life; I would not live forever. Let me alone, for my days are but a breath.
In desperation Job cries out to God ‘why am I so important to You that You hate me so much and torment me?’ He is now convinced that God is now punishing every tiny infraction. He feels like many of us who have come to interpret discipline. We feel that the punishment far outweighs the crime.
Job does not know deep down in his gut that God loves him. In fact, right now he is afraid that God hates him. Faith when everything is coming up roses is an easy thing. But let the storms arise and the waves break over the bow and our pleasant lives begin to sink under the waters, when the deep things come up to surround us, then can we still believe that God loves us and is here? Or do we believe that God has withdrawn to watch from a distance; He cares, but not enough to intervene. Never-the-less, here is something truly fine about Job. He thinks that God hates him, he is totally despondent, yet he does not condemn God. Satan is still losing.
17 “What is man, that You should exalt him, that You should set Your heart on him,
Concerning God’s dealings with man in general we see two points made out here. First of all Job is saying that man is not worth the special notice of God, so he asks God as to why he Is contending with him?
Then Job asks God why He then should direct His strongest affections on such a poor, base, vile, impotent creature as man, which is speaking about himself.
18 That You should visit him every morning, and test him every moment?
Have you ever heard the statement, ‘Don’t look down your nose at me?’ Some people think it is below them to pay any attention to anyone who is inferior to them. Therefore it is beyond their concern to reprove and correct another because it is below their interest. Thinking about this Job then wonders and asks why does God magnify man, by visiting him, and trying him, and making so much ado about him? Why will He thus pour all his forces upon one that is such an unequal match for him? Why will he visit him with afflictions? The problem here is that Job and we also mistake God, and the nature of His providence, if we think it any lessening to Him to take notice of those He created in His Image.
19 How long? Will You not look away from me, and let me alone till I swallow my saliva?
Job still wants to talk. He is urged because of his sufferings to continue his complaint; but his strength is getting to the point of exhaustion. If you have ever been a public speaker you have a small bottle or glass of water near you because your mouth or throat may get dry. Because of this condition he petitions God to suspend his sufferings even for so short a space as is necessary to just be able to swallow.
20 Have I sinned? What have I done to You, O watcher of men? Why have You set me as Your target, so that I am a burden to myself?
I have experienced this same thought process that Job is undergoing. When we are getting bombarded with attack after attack we want answers. We employ God to tell us what we have done to deserve the persecution. We ask Him what sin have we committed that we are not aware of. We want to know so we can confess and get right with God and hopefully He will stop or let up with all the heavy blows.
21 Why then do You not pardon my transgression, and take away my iniquity? For now I will lie down in the dust, and You will seek me diligently, but I will no longer be.”
Many teachers look at this verse and say that Job is confessing that he has sinned. I do not believe that this is the case here. Again I am of the opinion that Job is crying out for deliverance and is asking God that if he has sinned then would God please forgive him.
Job is saying, ‘If I have sinned, then why should not I have a part in that mercy that flows so freely to all mankind?’ That Job does not criminate himself here, as some interpret the text, is evident enough from his own repeated assertions of his innocence.
It is most certain that Bildad, who immediately answers, did not consider him as self incriminating but as to justifying himself; and this is the very ground on which he takes up the subject. Were we to admit the contrary, we should find strange inconsistencies, if not contradictions, in Job's speeches: on such a ground the controversy must have immediately terminated, as he would then have acknowledged that of which his friends accused him; and here the book of Job would have ended.
