Job 10King James Version
Job speaks to God. Why did you make me if you were going to destroy me? Your hands made me and fashioned me together, and now you have me in your grip. Let me alone for a little while before I go whence I shall not return, to the land of darkness and the shadow of death.
Job continues his speech, now addressing God directly with sustained intensity. He does not want to be condemned without knowing the charge. He asks God to tell him his sin. He reviews his own creation: God formed him like clay, gave him life and lovingkindness. Why then destroy him? He asks for a moment of relief before he goes to the land of darkness forever. This is one of the most intimate confrontations with God in the Bible.
Job refuses to be silent or to pretend piety he does not feel. He speaks to God as the one who made him and is now, inexplicably, unmanning him.
7: "Thou knowest that I am not wicked; and there is none that can deliver out of thine hand." Job's theological claim is blunt: you know the truth, and you are still doing this. The charge is not that God does not exist but that God is not acting in character.
Job's description of his own creation, cheese and clay and sinew and skin, reflects ancient understandings of embryology and conception. He is using the available metaphors for life's beginning to argue that whoever made him this carefully surely intended something other than this ending.
Job addresses God exclusively in this chapter. The tone shifts between accusation and appeal, between complaint and memory of God's forming hands. This chapter is Job at his most exposed.
The image of God as a potter fashioning Job from clay and now crushing what he made is a reversal of Genesis 2. Creation and destruction are in the same hands. This is not atheism; it is grief directed at the one who matters most.
This chapter is the prayer you pray when everything in you wants to walk away but you cannot, because the only one who could possibly help is the one causing the pain. Job stays in the conversation.
1My soul is weary of my life; I will leave my complaint upon myself; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.
2I will say unto God, Do not condemn me; shew me wherefore thou contendest with me.
3Is it good unto thee that thou shouldest oppress, that thou shouldest despise the work of thine hands, and shine upon the counsel of the wicked?
4Hast thou eyes of flesh? or seest thou as man seeth?
5Are thy days as the days of man? are thy years as man's days,
6That thou enquirest after mine iniquity, and searchest after my sin?
7Thou knowest that I am not wicked; and there is none that can deliver out of thine hand.
8Thine hands have made me and fashioned me together round about; yet thou dost destroy me.
9Remember, I beseech thee, that thou hast made me as the clay; and wilt thou bring me into dust again?
10Hast thou not poured me out as milk, and curdled me like cheese?
11Thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh, and hast fenced me with bones and sinews.
12Thou hast granted me life and favour, and thy visitation hath preserved my spirit.
13And these things hast thou hid in thine heart: I know that this is with thee.
14If I sin, then thou markest me, and thou wilt not acquit me from mine iniquity.
15If I be wicked, woe unto me; and if I be righteous, yet will I not lift up my head. I am full of confusion; therefore see thou mine affliction;
16For it increaseth. Thou huntest me as a fierce lion: and again thou shewest thyself marvellous upon me.
17Thou renewest thy witnesses against me, and increasest thine indignation upon me; changes and war are against me.
18Wherefore then hast thou brought me forth out of the womb? Oh that I had given up the ghost, and no eye had seen me!
19I should have been as though I had not been; I should have been carried from the womb to the grave.
20Are not my days few? cease then, and let me alone, that I may take comfort a little,
21Before I go whence I shall not return, even to the land of darkness and the shadow of death;
22A land of darkness, as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as darkness.