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📚“My soul is weary of my life. I will give full rein to my complaint; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul. 10:1 Job 7:11. He has decided to hide absolutely nothing of his thoughts and feelings. He gives free expression to what many people conceal in their hearts because they are afraid to bring them out into the open. Job is not concerned with what people might think of his words. He wants only the truth.⚜
2 📚I will say to God, ‘Do not condemn me. Show me why you contend with me.
10:2 His conscience accuses him of nothing and he wants to know what God has against him (Job 6:24; 13:23). He does not know that God has nothing against him, but loves him and views him with favor and satisfaction.
Notice how Job in the middle of a discussion with his friends suddenly begins to speak directly to God (Job 7:7-21; 10:2-22; 13:20—14:22; Job 16:7-8; 17:3-4; 30:20-23). Job’s friends never do this. Obviously Job was a man of prayer. He had the habit of speaking to God (Job 12:4). He pours out all his thoughts and desires at the feet of the great Creator of the universe. God would have all of us do this (Ps 62:8). He knows how some of our thoughts and questions are foolish and tainted with sin. But He understands our longings for Him and our desire for the truth, and He approves honesty of expression.⚜
3 📚Is it good for you to oppress, to despise the work of your hands, and shine on the counsel of the wicked?
10:3 Job 9:23-24. Job thinks that if God is so keen to punish why does He not punish the wicked who deserve it instead of people like himself who do not, in Job’s view, deserve it (compare Ps 73:3-5, 12-14).⚜
4 📚Have you eyes of flesh? Or do you see as man sees?
5 📚Are your days like the days of man? Are your years like man’s days,
6 📚That you inquire about my iniquity, and search for my sin?
7 📚You know that I am not wicked; and there is no one who can rescue from your hand.
10:4-7 Job’s friends have been searching for some sin in Job that will account for the disasters which have come on him. Why, Job asks, should God seek for his sin as they did? He is aware that God knows all things. If God sees some sin in Job that merits punishment Job wants God to reveal plainly what it is.⚜
8 📚“Your hands have made me and formed me altogether; yet you destroy me.
9 📚Remember, I beg you, that you have made me like clay; and will you bring me into dust again?
10 📚Have you not poured me out like milk, and curdled me like cheese?
11 📚You have clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews.
12 📚You have granted me life and favour, and your care has preserved my spirit.
13 📚And these things you have hidden in your heart. I know that this is with you:
14 📚If I sin, then you take note of me, and you will not acquit me from my iniquity.
15 📚If I am wicked, woe to me! And if I am righteous, I will still not lift up my head. I am full of shame. Therefore see my affliction,
16 📚For it is increasing. You hunt me like a fierce lion, and again show your marvellous power against me.
17 📚You renew your witnesses against me, and increase your indignation toward me. Changes and miserable struggle are my lot.
10:12-17 Though God has given him life and showed him kindness it seems to Job now that all the time God was like a harsh judge looking for some excuse to punish him, like a lion pursuing him to destruction.⚜
18 📚“Why then did you bring me out of the womb? Oh, that I had expired, and no eye had seen me!
19 📚I would have been as though I had not been. I would have been carried from the womb to the grave.
20 📚Are not my days few? Cease then, and leave me alone, that I may have a little comfort,
21 📚Before I go to the place from which I will not return, to the land of darkness and the shadow of death,
22 📚A land of darkness, like darkness itself, and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where even the light is like darkness.’ ”
10:21-22 Job had no hopes of heaven to cheer him, no verses like John 14:2-3, no descriptions like Rev 21:10-23 (what a privilege it is to live now with the whole of God’s revelation in our hands!). In the time in which Job lived not much was known about the condition of men’s spirits after death. God had revealed very little about it. Job’s view that they went to a place of utter darkness was not an uncommon one (Ps 88:10-12). Only in the New Testament do we have God’s full revelation concerning this subject (2 Tim 1:10). There we see that true believers will forever live in a place where there is no darkness at all (Rev 22:5).⚜