Job 6:9

Eliphaz the Temanite has given the first of the friends’ speeches (Job 4–5). He hints that the innocent never perish and that trouble is the harvest of those who sow wickedness (Job 4:7–9), so Job must be hiding some sin. Job’s reply fills Job 6–7. He begins by saying that the bitterness of his words matches the weight of his grief, and then, in these verses, he turns to God and asks to die. Right after them he rebukes his friends for failing to show him kindness (Job 6:14–23).

This is the second time Job has longed for death. In Job 3 he cursed the day he was born, asked why he did not die at birth (Job 3:11), and asked why light and life are given to the miserable who long for death and would rejoice to find the grave (Job 3:20–22). There he wished he had never lived. Here the wish becomes a request laid before God, which shows that it is a deep and settled cry.

The book is set in the land of Uz, east of Israel, among the wise men of the east, and its customs of family and sacrifice fit the age of the patriarchs, perhaps before Moses. Job’s friends hold that God always punishes sin with suffering and rewards righteousness with prosperity. God’s covenant with Israel does set blessings and curses before his people (Deuteronomy 28), and the friends harden that into a fixed rule, that great suffering proves great hidden sin. Job’s case breaks their rule, because God himself has called him perfect and upright (Job 1).

“Oh that I might have my request” opens in Hebrew with mî-yittēn, an exclamation of fervent, almost hopeless longing. It is built on nâthan, the everyday verb “to give”, which covers giving, putting and setting, and the same verb, yittēn, returns as “God would grant”. Job’s “request”, shᵉʼêlâh, is a petition, the word for something asked of another. He addresses it to God, ʼĕlôwahh, and he expects nothing from anyone else, because only God can give him what he wants.

“The thing that I long for” is tiqvâh, the ordinary word for hope or expectation. Strong’s traces it to a cord, something a person holds on to. Verse 9 shows what Job’s hope has become, and the irony is painful. The word that elsewhere looks forward to good things now looks forward to death, because death is the only relief Job can see.

Verse 9 says it outright: “Even that it would please God to destroy me”. The verb for “please”, yâʼal, means to be willing, to assent or to undertake something by choice. Job asks God to be content to do it. “Destroy” is dâkâʼ, to crush, bruise or beat to pieces, a forceful word. Job is asking for a decisive end to his suffering.

“That he would let loose his hand” uses nâthar, a verb that can mean to spring up, to shake off or to untie. Job pictures God’s hand as held back, prolonging his agony, and he asks God to release it and deliver the last blow. God’s hand, yâd, stands throughout Scripture for his power and action. “And cut me off!” is bâtsaʻ, to break off, finish or make an end of. Job wants a swift and final severance in place of a slow decline.

Job is confused about why God is afflicting him, and he speaks as if God were his destroyer. Yet his prayer still holds a true thing about God. Life and death are in God’s hand alone, as Hannah sings: the LORD kills and makes alive (1 Samuel 2:6). Job asks God to end his life because he knows that only God has the right to do it.

Job’s cry stands among the laments of Scripture. David cries that his heart is sore pained and the terrors of death have fallen on him (Psalm 55:4–5). The psalmist who thirsts for God has tears for his food day and night (Psalm 42:1–3). A whole psalm cries out of darkness to the God of salvation (Psalm 88), and its opening plea is from a soul full of troubles whose life draws near the grave (Psalm 88:1–3). Jeremiah’s lament gives verse after verse to what God’s hand has laid on him (Lamentations 3:1–20).

Verse 10 tells us what Job would carry with him into death: “Then should I yet have comfort”. The word is nechâmâh, consolation, from a root Strong’s connects with sighing or breathing hard. If God cut him off, Job would still have this one consolation.

“Yea, I would harden myself in sorrow” pictures Job bracing himself in his pain, setting his face to meet death even while sorrow overwhelms him. “Let him not spare” turns to God again and asks him to hold nothing back. It is a bold plea, and a trusting one, because Job assumes that God has both the power and the right to end his agony.

The comfort itself comes last: “for I have not concealed the words of the Holy One.” The verb kâchad means to hide, by act or by word, and so to deny or disown. Strong’s adds a stronger sense, to destroy. Job has kept nothing of God’s word back and has never denied it, even under pressure that might tempt a man to give up his faith or to confess a guilt he does not have. He has lived by what God revealed, which is the commitment of the psalmist who wrote, “Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee” (Psalm 119:11).

He calls God “the Holy One”, qâdôwsh, sacred and set apart in purity, a word used of God by eminence. Job’s claim is fidelity to the highest standard there is. This is the heart of his whole defence against his friends, and he will hold to it later: till he dies he will not remove his integrity from him (Job 27:5–6). In the end God himself takes Job’s side.

Verse 11 asks two questions that need no answer: “What is my strength, that I should hope? and what is mine end, that I should prolong my life?”

“Strength” is kôach, vigour, force or capacity, the power a person retains to do or to endure. Job has none left, in body or in spirit. “Hope” here is the verb yâchal, to wait or to hope. To hope is to wait for something, and waiting takes strength, which is exactly what Job lacks.

“End” is qêts, the end or outcome of a thing, from a root meaning to chop off. Job asks what end lies ahead of him, what restoration or vindication, that would make it worth enduring this. “Prolong” is ʼârak, here in the form that means to make long or stay long, and “my life” is nephesh, the soul, the life or the self. Job sees nothing ahead that would make a longer life anything but longer pain.

The two questions say the same thing in two ways, the second deepening the first. Others in Scripture have spoken the same way. The psalmist asks his own soul why it is cast down and disquieted (Psalm 42:5). Jeremiah says that his strength and his hope have perished from the LORD (Lamentations 3:18), in a chapter that walks from that darkness to hope in God’s mercies (Lamentations 3). Heman says he has been afflicted and ready to die from his youth up (Psalm 88:15).

The same word, kôach, comes back in verse 12: “Is my strength the strength of stones? or is my flesh of brass?” Stone was used for foundations, monuments and walls, and it stands for what is immovable and unfeeling. Brass, nâchûwsh, is copper or bronze, the metal of tools and weapons, a word Strong’s also takes figuratively as hard. Job asks whether he is made of such things. He is made of bâsâr, flesh, the body of a mortal creature, the word for man as frail before God.

Job’s body has been struck with disease (Job 2:7–8), and he will soon compare his life to the hard service of a hired labourer who longs for evening (Job 7:1–4). His friends speak as if he ought to endure like a stone, and he reminds them that no human body was built to bear what he is bearing. God knows our frame and remembers that we are dust (Psalm 103:14), and our High Priest is touched with the feeling of our infirmities (Hebrews 4:15). Job is pleading for the understanding that God already gives.

Verse 13 completes the picture: “Is not my help in me? and is wisdom driven quite from me?” The KJV keeps the form of the Hebrew question, and its sense is a lament that all help within Job has gone.

“Help” is ‘ezrâh, a word that usually means aid from outside, from God or from another person. Job turns it inward and asks whether any strength or resource of his own remains. “Wisdom” is tûwshîyâh, sound wisdom, good judgment, practical understanding, and also substance and success. Job feels that his ability to think clearly and make sense of what has happened to him has gone.

“Driven quite” is nâdach, to push off, thrust away or banish, a verb also used for swinging an axe and for leading someone astray. Job’s wisdom has been thrust out of him by the force of what he is suffering. He has lost his family, his goods and his health, and now he feels stripped of his clear mind as well. His friends’ conventional wisdom offers him nothing, and the next verses ask them for kindness in its place.

David and Asaph knew this desolation. Asaph asks whether the Lord will cast off for ever and whether his mercy is clean gone (Psalm 77:7–9). David, in the cave, looks for anyone to stand with him and finds that refuge has failed him (Psalm 142:4).

Job asked for death as a way out of his pain. Jesus went into suffering and death willingly, to conquer sin and death. In Gethsemane he said that his soul was exceeding sorrowful, even unto death (Matthew 26:38), and he prayed that the cup might pass from him, if the Father were willing (Luke 22:42). His sweat was as great drops of blood falling to the ground (Luke 22:44). Like Job he was flesh, with no strength of stones, and he knew pain, hunger and weariness. On the cross he cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46).

Job’s suffering tested his faith, while Christ’s suffering bore the curse that we deserved (Galatians 3:13). He was the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), cut off for others. Through his death he destroyed him that had the power of death and set free those who all their lifetime were held in fear of it (Hebrews 2:14–15). God gave his Son so that whoever believes in him should have everlasting life (John 3:16).

Job held to the words of the Holy One. Jesus is the Holy One of God (Mark 1:24), who came to fulfil the law and the prophets (Matthew 5:17) and was obedient unto death, even the death of the cross (Philippians 2:8). The comfort Job hoped to find in death is the comfort the Father of mercies now gives in Christ, who comforts us in all our tribulation (2 Corinthians 1:3–5).

Job’s questions about strength, an end and wisdom all find their answer in him. The Lord’s strength is made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9). Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24), and God has made him unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption (1 Corinthians 1:30). His resurrection gives a lively hope (1 Peter 1:3), the gospel is the power of God unto salvation (Romans 1:16), and at the end God will wipe away all tears (Revelation 21:4).

God kept this prayer in his word, every bitter line of it. He let a righteous man say that he wanted to die, that he had no strength left and that his wisdom was gone, and he did not strike him down for saying it. Our honest laments are safe with him.

He also answered Job far better than Job asked. Job wanted God to let loose his hand and end his life. God kept him alive, came to him, and showed himself, and the LORD turned Job’s captivity and gave him twice as much as he had before (Job 42:10). Job’s hope in this passage had shrunk to a grave. God’s purpose for him was restoration and a deeper knowledge of who God is.

And these verses show what a sufferer needs from those around him. Job is flesh and blood, and he says so to friends who were reasoning at him from a rule. The next thing he asks of them is kindness. God remembers that we are dust, and the passage sets that same patience before everyone who sits beside someone in pain.