Job 7
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 7Written by AI
Job turns from his friends to speak to God. Life is hard service, his nights are restless, and his days are a breath. He will not keep quiet. In a painful twist on Psalm 8, he asks why God pays such close attention to a mere human, if only to test him every moment.
Job Continues: Life Seems Futile
“Is not man consigned to labor on earth?
Are not his days like those of a hired hand?
Like a slave he longs for shade;
like a hireling he waits for his wages.
So I am allotted months of futility,
and nights of misery are appointed to me.
When I lie down I think:
‘When will I get up?’
But the night drags on,
and I toss and turn until dawn.
My flesh is clothed with worms
and encrusted with dirt;
my skin is cracked and festering.
My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle;
they come to an end without hope.
Remember that my life is but a breath.
My eyes will never again see happiness.
The eye that beholds me will no longer see me.
You will look for me, but I will be no more.
As a cloud vanishes and is gone,
so he who goes down to Sheol does not come back up.
He never returns to his house;
his place remembers him no more.
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.
Am I the sea, or the monster of the deep,
that You must keep me under guard?
When I think my bed will comfort me
and my couch will ease my complaint,
then You frighten me with dreams
and terrify me with visions,
so that I would prefer strangling and death
over my life in this body.
I loathe my life! I would not live forever.
Leave me alone, for my days are but a breath.
What is man that You should exalt him,
that You should set Your heart upon him,
that You attend to him every morning,
and test him every moment?
Will You never look away from me,
or leave me alone to swallow my spittle?
If I have sinned, what have I done to You,
O watcher of mankind?
Why have You made me Your target,
so that I am a burden to You?
Why do You not pardon my transgression
and take away my iniquity?
For soon I will lie down in the dust;
You will seek me, but I will be no more.”