Job 7:6

Chapters 6 and 7 are Job’s reply to the first speech of Eliphaz (Job 4–5), who had argued that suffering comes as the result of sin. Job had already cursed the day of his birth (Job 3), wishing he had died as soon as he was born (Job 3:11–13) and longing for the rest of the grave (Job 3:17). In Job 6–7 he rejects the explanation his friend has offered and pours out his anguish, first to his friends and then to God. Later in Job 7 he asks God why he pays such close attention to man and begs to be left alone (Job 7:17–21). Bildad speaks next (Job 8).

We know what Job’s friends do not. The book opens by telling us that Job was blameless and upright (Job 1:1), and that his trials came because God allowed Satan to test him (Job 1:12). He was struck with sore boils from head to foot (Job 2:7) and sat down among the ashes (Job 2:8). Everything Job says in these verses comes from a faithful man in that condition.

“Is there not an appointed time to man upon earth?” The phrase “appointed time” translates tsâbâʼ, the word for an army or host, for war or a campaign, and for service. It is the word in the title “LORD of hosts”. It is used in Israel’s census of the men able to go out to war (Numbers 1:3), and in Isaiah’s message of comfort Jerusalem is told that her warfare is accomplished (Isaiah 40:2). Job uses it of the whole of human life. A man on earth has a term of hard duty laid on him, and he has to serve it until it ends. The word for man here is ʼĕnôwsh, man as mortal, and “upon earth” is ʼerets, the earth or a land.

His second question draws on ordinary work. A hireling, sâkîyr, was a man who worked for wages by the day or by the year, with no stake of his own in the land or the business. God’s law protected such men, ordering that their wages be paid on the same day, because they depended on them (Leviticus 19:13, Deuteronomy 24:15). A hireling’s days belonged to his employer, and what he looked forward to was evening, his pay and his rest. Job says that his days (yôwm) are like that.

Verse 2 fills in the picture with two men at work. The first is a servant, ʻebed, a bondservant working under the sun, who “earnestly desireth the shadow”. The verb, shâʼaph, means to inhale eagerly, to pant after something. The shadow, tsêl, is shade, and figuratively shelter and protection. The second is the hireling again, who “looketh for the reward of his work”. To look for, qâvâh, is to wait for or hope for something. Pôʻal is a word for a deed or work that can also mean the wages earned by it, which is why the KJV reads “the reward of his work”. Both men are waiting for the end of the working day, and Job waits for the end of his suffering in the same way.

The toil Job describes belongs to a fallen world. After the first sin, Adam was told that he would eat bread by the sweat of his face until he returned to the ground (Genesis 3:17–19), and the Preacher asks what profit a man has from all his labour under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:3). The desire for rest after work runs through Scripture as well, from God’s own rest on the seventh day (Genesis 2:2–3) to the Sabbath he gave Israel (Exodus 20:8–11). Job’s longing for evening is the longing of every worker, and in his case the work is pain.

“So am I made to possess months of vanity”. The verb is nâchal, to inherit or occupy, and the KJV’s “am I made to possess” shows that this portion has been handed to Job, which he never chose. His inheritance is months (yerach, the word for a month or the moon) of shâvᵉʼ, emptiness, futility and worthlessness. Time that once held purpose and blessing has been drained of both.

“Wearisome nights are appointed to me.” The word for wearisome is ʻâmâl, toil and wearing effort, and so the worry and misery of body or mind that such toil brings. The nights are layil, the common word for night. The verb for appointed, mânâh, means to count or number, and to allot or appoint, and it is used of people as well as of God. Job’s nights of misery have been counted out to him like a ration.

Verse 5 describes Job’s body plainly. “My flesh (bâsâr) is clothed with worms and clods of dust”. The verb lâbash means to put on a garment, and Job’s flesh wears worms and dirt as its clothing. The worms are rimmâh, the word for maggots, which breed in rotting flesh. The clods are gûwsh, lumps of earth, and the dust is ʻâphâr, dust, clay or ashes. His sores are caked with dirt and with the ashes he sat among, or with the dried crusts of the sores themselves. The dust also recalls the word spoken to Adam, that man is dust and will return to dust (Genesis 3:19), and Job’s body already bears the marks of death while he is still alive.

“My skin (ʻôwr) is broken, and become loathsome.” The verb for broken, râgaʻ, properly means to toss violently and suddenly, and it is used of the sea tossed by waves and of skin tossed up by boils. Job’s skin keeps breaking open. Loathsome is mâʼaç, to spurn, reject or despise, and his skin has become something to turn away from. Serious skin disease was feared in Job’s world, and often taken as a sign of God’s displeasure or a cause of uncleanness, so a man in Job’s state was shunned by others, and he felt the disgust himself.

A psalm of David uses the same kind of language: “But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people” (Psalm 22:6).

“My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle”. The verb qâlal means to be light, and so swift, and in other places it can mean to be of little account or to be cursed. Here it is speed. The shuttle, ʼereg, is the weaver’s tool, and the word can also mean the weaving itself. Weaving was a daily craft in Job’s world, producing cloth for clothing and tents, and the shuttle was a small tool that carried the cross thread back and forth through the threads stretched on the loom. Everyone had seen how fast it flew. Job’s days pass like that, and like a piece of cloth his life is quickly coming to its end.

“And are spent without hope.” To be spent, kâlâh, is to come to an end, to cease, to be finished or consumed. “Without” is ʼepheç, a word for cessation or an end, and hope is tiqvâh, which literally means a cord and figuratively expectation and hope. Job’s days are running out, and he sees nothing ahead for which to wait.

Scripture speaks often of the shortness of life. Bildad will say that our days on earth are a shadow (Job 8:9), and Job later says that man born of woman is of few days and full of trouble, and comes up like a flower and is cut down (Job 14:1–2). Moses numbers our years at threescore and ten (Psalm 90:9–10) in a psalm that is all about our frailty before the eternal God (Psalm 90), and James calls our life a vapour that appears for a little time and then vanishes (James 4:13–14). The Bible is realistic about the brevity and toil of life in a fallen world. Job’s despair lay in this, that at this point in his trial he could see no purpose in it and no hope beyond it.

God has given us many prayers like Job’s. The psalmists bring him their despair and their questions: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1). One psalmist’s soul pants after God as the hart pants after the water brooks (Psalm 42:1), and another is weary of crying, his throat dried and his eyes failing while he waits for God (Psalm 69:3). These laments are part of God’s word, and they show that honest sorrow belongs within faith. Job’s longing for shade, rest and an end is the cry of a weary creature, and God hears it.

Job longed for the end of his hard service, and Jesus entered that service himself. He calls all who labour and are weary to come to him: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28–30). Hebrews says that there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, and that whoever enters God’s rest ceases from his own works (Hebrews 4:9–10). The labourer’s longing for evening and the servant’s longing for shade find their answer in him.

Christ also knew nights like Job’s. In Gethsemane his soul was exceeding sorrowful, even unto death (Matthew 26:38), and in his agony his sweat was as great drops of blood (Luke 22:44). On the cross he cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). Isaiah had foretold a servant who would be despised and rejected of men (Isaiah 53:3), whose suffering was the will of the LORD (Isaiah 53:10), and who would see the fruit of the travail of his soul and be satisfied (Isaiah 53:11). Job protested his suffering as undeserved. Christ, who was sinless, took suffering on himself willingly, for us. He made himself of no reputation and “took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men” (Philippians 2:7), and God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that we might be made the righteousness of God in him (2 Corinthians 5:21).

He rose on the third day (1 Corinthians 15:4), and that dawn answers every night of tossing. Job’s body was clothed with worms and dust, and Christ will change our lowly bodies to be like his glorious body (Philippians 3:21). Job’s days were spent without hope, and God has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection, to an inheritance kept in heaven (1 Peter 1:3–5). Jesus came that we might have life more abundantly (John 10:10), he gives a peace that passes understanding (Philippians 4:7), and he promises a world where God wipes away every tear and death, sorrow and pain are gone (Revelation 21:4).

That hope gives meaning to the days of service we still have. Our work, even when it is weary, can be done heartily as to the Lord (Colossians 3:23), and the end of the day for a believer is the presence of God and the reward of faithful service.

These verses give us words for the heaviest days, spoken by a righteous man and kept by God in Scripture. They show that weariness, sleepless nights, a broken body and fading hope can all be brought to God as they are. They give us a true picture of life in a fallen world, short and full of toil, and they make the believer’s hope in Christ stand out all the more clearly beside it.

They also show who God is. He listened to Job’s complaint and answered him in the end, and he restored him. He sent his Son into the same night of suffering and brought him out of it on the third morning. The friends who sat with Job explained his pain wrongly, and Job’s words teach us patience and compassion toward anyone whose nights are long and whose days feel spent. The God who allotted Job his nights also numbers ours, and the rest Job longed for is the rest Christ gives.