Job 10
About JobWritten by AI
Job is a long poem framed by a short story. A good man loses his wealth, his children, and his health, and no one tells him why. The writer and the date are unknown: the story is set in the age of the patriarchs, but the book may have been written much later, and Christians hold different views on when. Some Jewish tradition credits Moses.
After two prose chapters, Job and three friends trade speeches in rounds. The friends insist suffering must be punishment for sin; Job insists he is innocent and pleads for God to answer him. A younger man, Elihu, speaks next. Then the LORD Himself answers out of the whirlwind, and the story closes in prose.
Read the friends with care. They say many true things about God, but they apply them wrongly, and at the end God says they have not spoken of Him accurately as Job has (42:7). Watch for Job's flashes of hope in the dark: “I know that my Redeemer lives.”
Before you read Job 10Written by AI
Job speaks directly to God again: Your hands shaped me, so why are You now destroying me? Tell me what charges You have against me. He recalls how carefully God formed him and cannot understand the change. He ends asking for a little relief before he goes to the land of darkness.
Job’s Plea to God
“I loathe my own life;
I will express my complaint
and speak in the bitterness of my soul.
I will say to God:
Do not condemn me!
Let me know why You prosecute me.
Does it please You to oppress me,
to reject the work of Your hands
and favor the schemes of the wicked?
Do You have eyes of flesh?
Do You see as man sees?
Are Your days like those of a mortal,
or Your years like those of a man,
that You should seek my iniquity
and search out my sin—
though You know that I am not guilty,
and there is no deliverance from Your hand?
Your hands shaped me and altogether formed me.
Would You now turn and destroy me?
Please remember that You molded me like clay.
Would You now return me to dust?
Did You not pour me out like milk,
and curdle me like cheese?
You clothed me with skin and flesh,
and knit me together with bones and sinews.
You have granted me life and loving devotion,
and Your care has preserved my spirit.
Yet You concealed these things in Your heart,
and I know that this was in Your mind:
If I sinned, You would take note,
and would not acquit me of my iniquity.
If I am guilty, woe to me!
And even if I am righteous, I cannot lift my head.
I am full of shame
and aware of my affliction.
Should I hold my head high,
You would hunt me like a lion,
and again display Your power against me.
You produce new witnesses against me
and multiply Your anger toward me.
Hardships assault me
in wave after wave.
Why then did You bring me from the womb?
Oh, that I had died, and no eye had seen me!
If only I had never come to be,
but had been carried from the womb to the grave.
Are my days not few?
Withdraw from me, that I may have a little comfort,
before I go—never to return—
to a land of darkness and gloom,
to a land of utter darkness,
of deep shadow and disorder,
where even the light is like darkness.”