"1 Do not human beings have a hard service on earth, and are not their days like the days of a laborer? 2 Like a slave who longs for the shadow, and like laborers who look for their wages, 3 so I am allotted months of emptiness, and nights of misery are apportioned to me. 4 When I lie down I say, 'When shall I rise?' But the night is long, and I am full of tossing until dawn. 5 My flesh is clothed with worms and dirt; my skin hardens, then breaks out again. 6 My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle, and come to their end without hope."
A. I would suggest that Job's tone in these verses is more of a lament than an outburst of anger. Do you agree? What is the difference between a lament and an outburst of anger? Remember that Job is a "big guy" (the "greatest of all the people of the East"--1:3). Big guys usually want control. How does the issue of control play into the difference between anger and lament? When you or others have suffered, has anger played a role? lament?
B. The word translated as "hard service" here ("conscript service" in JB) is arresting. It suggests something about the course of life. Life is sheer drudgery. Life is unrelenting, and hard work is uncompensated. "Months of emptiness" and "nights of misery" are Job's fate. Is suffering the "bottom line" in life? Would you say there is more drudgery than joy? What is life for you at this time? The fact that Job lived probably 95% of his life in honor and respect and that only recently had he run into this "hard service" might mean that his perspectives are skewed. Would you write off these lines to Job's current misconstrual of life because of the sudden reversal of his fortunes? Or, is he onto something?
C. This passage provides the clearest window to date into the practical realities of Job's suffering. One of these realities is his distorted view of time (vv. 3-4, 6). How agonizing is it not to be able to sleep? He seems to be disoriented. The days pass quickly; the nights linger. Has time ever become this way for you? What was it like?
D. We get a laser-like insight into Job's bodily condition in verse 5. How does a person suffer when "my skin hardens, then breaks out again?" For another biblical passage describing wounds that won't heal, read Is. 1:5-6. That was my father's condition just before he died. How is Job's skin condition a metaphor for his life?
E. His days come to an end without hope (v. 6). How real is the idea of hope for you? Hope in what? Many people live as if they have a "truce" with hope--'I won't bug you and you don't make any demands on me'-- a kind of resignation in the face of life. True for you or those whom you know?
7:7-10
"7 Remember that my life is a breath; my eye will never again see good. 8 The eye that beholds me will see me no more; while your eyes are upon me, I shall be gone. 9 As the cloud fades and vanishes, so those who go down to Sheol do not come up; 10 they return no more to their houses, nor do their places know them any more."
A. What is Job's tone in these four verses? Has it changed from 7:1-6? How final do you think his "air of finality" is in 7?
B. He seems to be addressing God in these verses. He doesn't directly speak to God in chs. 3 or 6, but here he does so, albeit tentatively at this point. Why does it take him so long to turn his speech in the direction of God?
C. I am not a psychologist, but it seems like Job is what people would call "clinically depressed." He now uses terminology about his life that shows its evanescence (i.e., "cloud"). After viewing WW II battlefields in France, national poet laureate Rita Dove wrote a poem imaginatively describing the soldiers in these words: "A soldier is smoke/ waiting for the wind." What is life like for those who describe life this way?
D. Why can't Job just resolve to put things behind him? What is really holding him back from doing so? Why isn't what happened just a "speed bump" on the highway of life?
Concluding Thought