Job 10:9

The whole passage rests on its first line: “Thine hands have made me and fashioned me together round about; yet thou dost destroy me.” Job is speaking straight to God. In chapters 9 and 10 he turns from arguing with his friends to wrestling with the Almighty himself. He has owned God’s power and wisdom (Job 9:4–10) and then asked how a man could ever have a fair hearing with such a God (Job 9:11–35). Chapter 10 opens with his plea, “shew me wherefore thou contendest with me” (Job 10:2). In this verse he reaches the heart of his trouble. The God who made him with such care has become, in his experience, the one who is undoing him.

His friends held a simple rule, that the righteous prosper and the wicked suffer, so that suffering as heavy as Job’s must come from sin. The book has already shown us Job as blameless and upright (Job 1), and his suffering breaks their rule. Job also draws on a truth Israel knew from the beginning, that “the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground” (Genesis 2:7). If God’s hands formed him, how can those same hands now be taking him apart?

“Thine hands” uses yâd, the ordinary word for a hand. Scripture speaks of God’s hands to show his own power personally at work, and Job means that God himself made him. The verb behind “made” is ‘âtsaḇ, which properly means to carve or fashion, and from that it comes to mean to pain or grieve. Here it carries the craftsman’s sense, standing beside ‘âśâh, the everyday verb to do or make, which the KJV renders “fashioned”. The Hebrew phrase wayya‘aśūnî yaḥaḏ sāḇîḇ, “and fashioned me together round about”, uses yachad, “together”, and çâbîyb, “round about” or “on every side”. God shaped the whole of Job, every part of him, on every side.

Then comes the hard word: “yet thou dost destroy me.” The verb bâlaʻ means to swallow, swallow up or destroy. Job feels swallowed up by the very power that brought him into being, and the closeness of the two acts in one line is what makes his pain so sharp.

Job’s next words are a prayer: “Remember, I beseech thee, that thou hast made me as the clay; and wilt thou bring me into dust again?” The verb zâkar means to remember, and in one of its forms to mention or bring to remembrance. God forgets none of his works, so Job is appealing to him to deal with Job as his own handiwork. “I beseech thee” is literally “I pray you”, an earnest and respectful request from a man who still believes God can act for him.

The word for clay, chômer, means clay, mortar or mire, and Strong’s traces it to a root meaning “to boil up”. In Scripture the potter and the clay picture the Maker and what he makes, with the potter’s skill and the clay’s dependence on him. Isaiah prays, “we are the clay, and thou our potter” (Isaiah 64:8), and he also warns, “Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker!” (Isaiah 45:9–10). Job’s words come from the clay to its potter as a plea.

Dust, ʻâphâr, means dust, dry earth or loose soil. It takes us back to man’s beginning from the dust of the ground and forward to his end, when the dust returns to the earth (Ecclesiastes 12:7). Job feels that end coming quickly. Job knows God can return him to dust, and what troubles him is why the God who formed him so carefully would do it. A psalm joins God’s remembering and our being dust in one line: “he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust” (Psalm 103:14).

Job now goes back before his birth: “Hast thou not poured me out as milk, and curdled me like cheese? Thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh, and hast fenced me with bones and sinews.” The question “Hast thou not” expects the answer yes. Job is reminding God of what both of them know.

After all the pictures of his making, Job remembers what God did for him once he was made: “Thou hast granted me life and favour, and thy visitation hath preserved my spirit.” “Granted” is ʻâsâh, the same verb that the KJV renders “fashioned” in verse 8, here in its broad sense of doing or making. God made Job, and God also made life and favour for him. “Life” is chay, the common word for life and the living.

“Favour” is cheçed, from the root châçad, one of the richest words in the Old Testament. It is often rendered lovingkindness, mercy or steadfast love, and Strong’s gives kindness, favour, good deed and pity among its senses. It speaks of God’s loyal goodness toward those who are his.

“Visitation” is pᵉquddâh, a word for oversight, charge or custody. God’s visitation in Scripture can bring blessing or punishment, and the verb beside it here settles which, because it “preserved” Job’s spirit. That verb, shâmar, means to guard, keep, watch over or preserve, and Strong’s gives its root sense as to hedge about, as with thorns. “Spirit” is rûwach, which means wind, breath or spirit, from a root meaning to blow or breathe, and here it stands for Job’s inner life. God watched over that life and kept it.

This is a remarkable thing to say in the middle of such a lament. Job has said that God crushes him with a tempest and multiplies his wounds without cause (Job 9:17), that he is unable to answer God or meet him in judgment (Job 9:32), and that he longs for someone to stand between them (Job 9:33). Before the chapter ends he asks God to leave him alone so that he may have a little comfort (Job 10:20). Yet here he remembers God’s kindness. His friends saw prosperity as proof of God’s favour and suffering as proof of his anger, and Job, with everything gone, still names his life and all its blessings as God’s gift. At the end of the book the LORD rebukes Job’s friends (Job 42:7) and restores Job, and the kindness Job remembers here proves true again.

Scripture says the same of every good thing we have. God is the giver of “every good gift and every perfect gift” (James 1:17). Psalm 103 calls the soul to bless the LORD for all his benefits (Psalm 103:2–5), and Lamentations, written amid ruin, holds on to the LORD’s mercies that never cease (Lamentations 3:22–23). Remembering God’s past mercies steadies a sufferer when the present is dark.

Job is lamenting, and his words are a desperate plea for understanding, spoken to the God he still holds on to. His language is strong. He speaks of God destroying him, and he says so to God’s face. All through Job 10 he still addresses God as his Maker, asks him to remember, recalls his kindness and expects an answer. That is how a man speaks who believes God holds both the answers and the power to change his situation, and it is why he longs for a mediator.

Lament like this has its place in Scripture. The psalms of lament pour out pain and confusion before God (Psalm 3), and some speak with Job’s boldness: Psalm 44 after defeat, Psalm 77 in distress that turns to hope, and Psalm 88 in the deepest trouble (Psalm 44, Psalm 77, Psalm 88). One psalm cries, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1–2). Faith that brings its pain honestly to God keeps hold of him in the middle of the struggle, and Job’s honesty is part of his integrity.

The New Testament shows us whose hands Job was speaking of. John says of the Word, “All things were made by him” (John 1:3), and Paul says that all things were created by the Son (Colossians 1:16). The Maker who clothed Job with skin and flesh took that flesh himself: “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us … full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). His human body was formed in Mary’s womb by the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:35). He knows the frailty of the body from within, for our High Priest is “touched with the feeling of our infirmities” and was tempted in every way, “yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).

Job felt destroyed by his Creator. Christ, the Creator, went willingly to the cross. The sinless one was made sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21), he “poured out his soul unto death” (Isaiah 53:12), and he cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). There God himself bore the destruction that sin brought and made it the means of new creation. Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), and he gives eternal life to all who believe in him (John 3:16). The man who longed for someone to stand between him and God has his answer in Christ, the mediator of a better covenant (Hebrews 8:6).

The hope of these verses for the body is fulfilled in him too. His resurrection is the pledge of ours (1 Corinthians 15:20–23). The Spirit who raised Jesus will give life to our mortal bodies (Romans 8:11), and we wait for the redemption of our body (Romans 8:23), when, as Paul says, “this corruptible must put on incorruption” (1 Corinthians 15:53) and Christ will make our bodies like his glorious body (Philippians 3:21). Whoever is in Christ is already a new creature (2 Corinthians 5:17). For those who belong to him, the clay is headed for resurrection, in the new creation where “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away” (Revelation 21:1–5).

Job held two things together: the care with which God had made him, and a suffering he had no way to explain. He brought both to God in prayer. He remembered God’s past kindness with everything gone, and that memory stood beside his pain all the way through his complaint.

These verses also show us who God is. He forms each person in the womb by his own hand, clothes the body with skin and flesh and shelters it with bone and sinew. He gives life and kindness and watches over the spirit he has made. He knows our frame and remembers that we are dust. And in Christ the Maker has worn our clay, borne our death and promised to raise us, so the God Job called on as his Maker is also the God who redeems his handiwork.