Job

Chapter 10

Job’s Plea to God

Job turns from the impossibility of contending with God to a direct plea against the way his life is being handled. He asks why the God who formed him so carefully now seems bent on destroying him, wonders why he was brought out of the womb only to be watched and prosecuted, and pleads for a little respite before he descends into the darkness from which no one returns.

This chapter continues Job's answer without returning to the friends at all. It deepens the crisis by tying his suffering to creation itself: the God who made and preserved him now appears, to Job, as the very one undoing what those hands once fashioned with care.

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Job 10

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vv. 1-22

Job’s Plea to God

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“¹I loathe my own life; ²I will say to God: ³Does it please You to oppress me, ⁴Do You have eyes of flesh? ⁵Are Your days like those of a mortal, ⁶that You should seek my iniquity ⁷though You know that I am not guilty,

⁸Your hands shaped me and altogether formed me. ⁹Please remember that You molded me like clay. ¹⁰Did You not pour me out like milk, ¹¹You clothed me with skin and flesh, ¹²You have granted me life and loving devotion, ¹³Yet You concealed these things in Your heart, ¹⁴If I sinned, You would take note, ¹⁵If I am guilty, woe to me! ¹⁶Should I hold my head high, ¹⁷You produce new witnesses against me

¹⁸Why then did You bring me from the womb? ¹⁹If only I had never come to be, ²⁰Are my days not few? ²¹before I go — never to return — ²²to a land of utter darkness,

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01vv. 1-22Job’s Plea to GodJob speaks to God from a place of exhaustion, asking why he is being treated like an object of suspicion when God knows he is not guilty in the way his sufferings suggest. He moves from protest over divine scrutiny to a meditation on being shaped in the womb and sustained in life, only to end by begging for a brief pause before he goes down to the land of darkness.