Job 10:14 - Meaning and Application

Here Job pours out his bitter complaints. He is harsh here, and he cannot be fully excused, yet he is not complaining without cause. He is not like the murmuring Israelites, who grumbled without reason. Still, what he says should warn us to keep better control of our spirits when trouble comes.

First, he complains about how strictly God seems to deal with him. He feels as if God is watching for every mistake. “If I sin, then you mark me,” he says, meaning that even a small wrong word or a careless glance would be noticed and counted against him. If God were to keep such a record of our sins, we would all be ruined. But the truth is, though we sin, God does not deal with us in that severe way.

Job also feels that God presses every advantage to the full. “You will not acquit me from my iniquity,” he says. Because of his suffering, he cannot feel the comfort of pardon. He cannot hear the voice of joy and gladness. It is hard to see God’s love when his face seems stern and his hand feels like a rod.

Job then speaks of how miserable his condition is. If he is wicked, then he says, “Woe to me.” That is true for all of us, because a sinful life is a sad life and ends in ruin. This is especially serious for those who know better, who have had religious training, strong convictions, good parents, or many opportunities to hear grace. If such a person lives wickedly, the guilt is heavier still.

If Job is righteous, he still cannot lift up his head. He is so crushed by trouble that he cannot face anything with confidence. Fear is on the inside, and conflict is on the outside. He is shamed before people, and his mind is in constant turmoil. He is nearly overwhelmed, like one driven close to madness (Psalm 88:15).

He also complains about the severity of the punishment itself. He thinks God is not only finding fault with him, but punishing him heavily. His suffering feels cruel and astonishing. It is as if God is hunting him like a lion chasing its prey. The pain is not only strange to him, it has made him a wonder to others, because people cannot understand how he can bear so much. What made the suffering worst was that he felt God’s anger in it. His body was wounded, and his spirit was wounded too, because he saw these troubles as signs of God’s displeasure.

The trouble was also growing. Job keeps saying that he expected it to ease, but it only got worse. He saw one witness after another rise up against him, as if each new pain added more proof. “Changes and war are against me,” he says. If anything changed, it was only for the worse. He felt as if he was living in a state of war. While we are in this world, we should expect clouds to return after rain, and sometimes the hardest trials come at the end. Since God was acting against him in this way, Job felt it was a great change, because God usually shows kindness to his people. When he acts otherwise, it is his strange work, his unusual act.

Job then complains about his very life. He asks why he was ever born into such misery, if this was going to be his lot. It is the language of pain and despair, and it repeats a sin he had already fallen into before. Just before, he had spoken of life as a favor (Job 10:12). Now he calls it a burden and blames God for giving it. One writer offers a kind reading of Job here. He suggests that Job may have felt his life was no longer serving its main purpose, which is to glorify God. His harp, in that sense, was hanging on the willow, and he felt unable to praise God. He may also have feared that his suffering would bring shame on God and give his enemies a reason to speak against him. If that is what he meant, the mistake was in his understanding, because we can glorify the Lord even in suffering. Still, there is a lesson for us: we should not cling too tightly to life, since even wise and good people have sometimes wished they had died at birth.

From there, Job turns to humble requests. He asks God to look on his suffering and notice his case with compassion, as David also prayed, “Look upon my affliction and my pain” (Psalm 25:18). In trouble, we should bring ourselves before God and comfort ourselves with the thought that he knows our souls in adversity.

He also asks for some relief. If God will not remove the trouble, may he at least grant a pause? “Let me alone, that I may have a little comfort,” he says (Job 10:20). He asks for a little rest, a little breathing room, a little time to feel like himself again. He would count that as a great kindness. Those who are not thankful for steady comfort should think how precious even one hour of relief would be if they were in constant pain.

Job adds one reason for his plea: life is very short. “Are not my days few?” he asks. Yes, they are very few.

Job pleads, “Lord, let it not be all misery. I have only a little time to live, so let me have some comfort while life lasts.” This appeal leans on God’s good nature, and that thought brings real comfort to a hurting soul. If we use that plea with God, “Are not my days few? Lord, pity me,” we should also use it with ourselves to stir us to duty. “Are not my days few? Then I should redeem the time, use my opportunities well, and do with all my strength whatever my hand finds to do, so I will be ready for the many days of eternity.”

He also feels that death and its darkness are very near and will last a long time (Job 10:21, Job 10:22). So he asks, “Lord, give me some relief before I die,” meaning, “Do not let me die in this pain.” David makes a similar plea, “Otherwise I will fall asleep in death,” and then it would be too late to look for relief, “for will you show wonders to the dead?” (Psa 13:3; Psa 88:10). In the same way, we should earnestly ask for grace and pray, “Lord, renew my inner life. Lord, make me holy before I die, because otherwise it will never happen.”

Job also speaks here about the state of the dead. First, it is a fixed state. We do not return from it to live this same life again (Job 7:10). At death we must say a final goodbye to this world. The body is laid where it will stay for a long time, and the soul is sent to the state where it will remain forever. Anything that is done only once, and done for eternity, must be done well.

Second, it is a very sad state, at least as it appears to us now. Holy people, at death, go to a land of light where there is no death. But they leave their bodies in a land of darkness and the shadow of death. Job piles up expressions with the same meaning to show that he felt the grave as dreadfully as anyone naturally would. His pain was so great that it was only extreme misery that made him wish for death.

If we look into the grave, we find, first, that there is no order there. It is a place without arrangement, where night goes on without end and day never comes. All there lie on the same level. There is no difference between prince and peasant, for “the servant is free from his master” (Job 3:19). People are not brought to the grave in any human order, not the oldest first, not the richest, not the poorest. Yet each comes in the order set by the God of life.

Second, there is no light there. In the grave there is thick darkness, a darkness that cannot be felt, yet is deeply feared by those who enjoy the light of life. There is no knowledge, no comfort, no joy, no praise to God, and no working out of salvation. Job was so ashamed that others should see his sores, and so unwilling to see them himself, that the grave’s darkness, which would hide and cover them, seemed welcome to him. Darkness comes on us, so let us walk and work while we still have the light with us.

Since the grave is a land of darkness, it is a mercy that we are carried there with our eyes closed, because then it makes no difference to us. To man, the grave is a land of darkness, and we think of our loved ones who have gone there as being in darkness (Psa 88:18). Yet it is not darkness to God. That is clear from this: the dust of the saints’ bodies, though scattered and mixed with other dust, will lose nothing, because God watches every grain of it, and it will all be brought back in the great day.