Sometimes, when in affliction, the believer is tempted to think that God’s providences and His justice cannot be reconciled. Faith and patience would keep us from being weary of our lives and would show us that when God contends with us, there is always some good purpose in it.
Job 10
1 My soul is weary of my life; I will leave my complaint upon myself; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.
2 I will say unto God, Do not condemn me; shew me wherefore thou contendest with me.
3 Is 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?
4 Hast thou eyes of flesh? or seest thou as man seeth?
5 Are thy days as the days of man? are thy years as man’s days,
6 That thou enquirest after mine iniquity, and searchest after my sin?
7 Thou knowest that I am not wicked; and there is none that can deliver out of thine hand.
8 Thine hands have made me and fashioned me together round about; yet thou dost destroy me.
9 Remember, I beseech thee, that thou hast made me as the clay; and wilt thou bring me into dust again?
10 Hast thou not poured me out as milk, and curdled me like cheese?
11 Thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh, and hast fenced me with bones and sinews.
12 Thou hast granted me life and favour, and thy visitation hath preserved my spirit.
13 And these things hast thou hid in thine heart: I know that this is with thee.
14 If I sin, then thou markest me, and thou wilt not acquit me from mine iniquity.
15 If 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;
16 For it increaseth. Thou huntest me as a fierce lion: and again thou shewest thyself marvellous upon me.
17 Thou renewest thy witnesses against me, and increasest thine indignation upon me; changes and war are against me.
18 Wherefore then hast thou brought me forth out of the womb? Oh that I had given up the ghost, and no eye had seen me!
19 I should have been as though I had not been; I should have been carried from the womb to the grave.
20 Are not my days few? cease then, and let me alone, that I may take comfort a little,
21 Before I go whence I shall not return, even to the land of darkness and the shadow of death;
22 A land of darkness, as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as darkness.
Job 10:1-4 – J. Vernon McGee
Job 10:5-22 – J. Vernon McGee
Job 10 – Soul Bitterness
In this chapter Job accuses God of persecuting His own workmanship, Job 20:3; of pursuing him with repeated strokes, as if he had not time enough to wait between them, but must hurry on to achieve His design, Job 10:5; of reversing the careful providence which had watched over his earlier years, Job 10:12; of hunting and playing with him as a wild beast with his prey, Job 10:16-17; and asks that he may be allowed speedily to enter the land of Sheol, Job 10:18-22.
As we read these complaints, we may remember days in our lives when we uttered similar ones, but we are without excuse. And when we are tempted in this direction, it is for us to remember that probably we are being tried to teach the manifold wisdom of God, and that the works of God should be made manifest in us, Ephesians 3:10; John 9:3. It will enable us to endure, if we remember that God has conferred on us high honor, by choosing us to show that we can stand the fire, like those iron safes, blackened by smoke, which the makers place in the shop windows to prove the stability of their workmanship. —Through the Bible Day by Day
Job 10:21—The land of darkness and the shadow of death.
This represented the highest thinking of that age about the future. There were gleams now and again of something more; but they were fitful and uncertain, soon overtaken by dark and sad forebodings. How different to our happy condition, for whom death is abolished, life and immortality have been brought to light! The patriarch called the present life Day, and the future Night. We know that in comparison the present is Night, and the future Day. “The night is far spent, the day is at hand; let us put on the armor of light.”
For us, too, there is something better. We wait for His Son from heaven; we look for that blessed hope, the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ. “As the waters of the sea are held between two mighty gravitations, the moon now drawing them toward itself, and the earth drawing them back again, thus giving the ebbing and flowing tide, by which our earth is kept clean and healthful, so must the tides of the soul’s affection move perpetually between the cross of Christ and the coming of Christ, influenced now by the power of memory and now by the power of hope.” It is said of the late Dr. Gordon: “Hardly a sermon was preached without allusion to the glorious appearing. Never a day passed in which he did not prepare himself for it, in which its hastening was not sought for with prayer.” “Yet a little while [Greek, how little! how little!] and He that shall come will come.” The attitude of every believer should be that of waiting: with loins girt and lamp burning, let us be ready to meet our Lord.
“The Best is yet to be,
The Last for which the First was made.” —Our Daily Homily