1My soul is tired of life; I will let my sad thoughts go free in words; my soul will make a bitter outcry. 2I will say to God, Do not put me down as a sinner; make clear to me what you have against me. 3What profit is it to you to be cruel, to give up the work of your hands, looking kindly on the design of evil-doers? 4Have you eyes of flesh, or do you see as man sees? 5Are your days as the days of man, or your years like his, 6That you take note of my sin, searching after my wrongdoing, 7Though you see that I am not an evil-doer; and there is no one who is able to take a man out of your hands? 8Your hands made me, and I was formed by you, but then, changing your purpose, you gave me up to destruction. 9O keep in mind that you made me out of earth; and will you send me back again to dust? 10Was I not drained out like milk, becoming hard like cheese? 11By you I was clothed with skin and flesh, and joined together with bones and muscles. 12You have been kind to me, and your grace has been with me, and your care has kept my spirit safe. 13But you kept these things in the secret of your heart; I am certain this was in your thoughts: 14That, if I did wrong, you would take note of it, and would not make me clear from sin: 15That, if I was an evil-doer, the curse would come on me; and if I was upright, my head would not be lifted up, being full of shame and overcome with trouble. 16And that if there was cause for pride, you would go after me like a lion; and again put out your wonders against me: 17That you would send new witnesses against me, increasing your wrath against me, and letting loose new armies on me. 18Why then did you make me come out of my mother's body? It would have been better for me to have taken my last breath, and for no eye to have seen me, 19And for me to have been as if I had not been; to have been taken from my mother's body straight to my last resting-place. 20Are not the days of my life small in number? Let your eyes be turned away from me, so that I may have a little pleasure, 21Before I go to the place from which I will not come back, to the land where all is dark and black, 22A land of thick dark, without order, where the very light is dark.
Matthew Henry's Commentary
Job complains of his hardships. (1-7) He pleads with God as his Maker. (8-13) He complains of God's severity. (14-22) 1-7 Job, being weary of his life, resolves to complain, but he will not charge God with unrighteousness. Here is a prayer that he might be delivered from the sting of his afflictions, which is sin. When God afflicts us, he contends with us; when he contends with us, there is always a reason; and it is desirable to know the reason, that we may repent of and forsake the sin for which God has a controversy with us. But when, like Job, we speak in the bitterness of our souls, we increase guilt and vexation. Let us harbour no hard thoughts of God; we shall hereafter see there was no cause for them. Job is sure that God does not discover things, nor judge of them, as men do; therefore he thinks it strange that God continues him under affliction, as if he must take time to inquire into his sin. 8-13 Job seems to argue with God, as if he only formed and preserved him for misery. God made us, not we ourselves. How sad that those bodies should be instruments of unrighteousness, which are capable of being temples of the Holy Ghost! But the soul is the life, the soul is the man, and this is the gift of God. If we plead with ourselves as an inducement to duty, God made me and maintains me, we may plead as an argument for mercy, Thou hast made me, do thou new-make me; I am thine, save me. 14-22 Job did not deny that as a sinner he deserved his sufferings; but he thought that justice was executed upon him with peculiar rigour. His gloom, unbelief, and hard thoughts of God, were as much to be ascribed to Satan's inward temptations, and his anguish of soul, under the sense of God's displeasure, as to his outward trials, and remaining depravity. Our Creator, become in Christ our Redeemer also, will not destroy the work of his hands in any humble believer; but will renew him unto holiness, that he may enjoy eternal life. If anguish on earth renders the grave a desirable refuge, what will be their condition who are condemned to the blackness of darkness for ever? Let every sinner seek deliverance from that dreadful state, and every believer be thankful to Jesus, who delivereth from the wrath to come.