Job

Chapter 7

Job Continues: Life Seems Futile

Job continues by describing human life as hard service and his own days as months of futility, sleeplessness, and decaying flesh. From that misery he turns directly toward God, saying he will not restrain his mouth, asking why such relentless attention is fixed on him, and pleading either for pardon or for release before his life disappears.

This chapter carries Job's reply from protest against his friends into direct address to God. It deepens the book's tension by showing that Job's anguish is not only social or bodily now, but theological and personal in the presence of the God he cannot escape.

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Job 7

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vv. 1-21

Job Continues: Life Seems Futile

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“¹Is not man consigned to labor on earth? ²Like a slave he longs for shade; ³So I am allotted months of futility, ⁴When I lie down I think: ⁵My flesh is clothed with worms ⁶My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle;

⁷Remember that my life is but a breath. ⁸The eye that beholds me will no longer see me. ⁹As a cloud vanishes and is gone, ¹⁰He never returns to his house; ¹¹Therefore I will not restrain my mouth; ¹²Am I the sea, or the monster of the deep, ¹³When I think my bed will comfort me ¹⁴then You frighten me with dreams ¹⁵so that I would prefer strangling and death ¹⁶I loathe my life! I would not live forever.

¹⁷What is man that You should exalt him, ¹⁸that You attend to him every morning, ¹⁹Will You never look away from me, ²⁰If I have sinned, what have I done to You, ²¹Why do You not pardon my transgression

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01vv. 1-21Job Continues: Life Seems FutileJob describes life first as weary labor and his own existence as a stretch of restless nights and physical corruption, with no prospect of renewal. He then turns toward God in complaint, asking why such scrutiny is laid on a human life so brief and fragile, and ends by pleading for either forgiveness or relief before he is gone.