ao:eng_webu
Job 7
1“Isn’t a man forced to labor on earth? Aren’t his days like the days of a hired hand?
2As a servant who earnestly the shadow, as a hireling who looks for his wages,
3so I am made to possess months of misery, wearisome nights are appointed to me.
4When I lie down, I say, ‘When will I arise, and the night be gone?’ I toss and turn until the dawning of the day.
5My flesh is clothed with worms and clods of dust. My skin closes up, and breaks out afresh.
6My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and are spent without hope.
7Oh remember that my life is a breath. My eye will no more see good.
8The eye of him who sees me will see me no more. Your eyes will be on me, but I will not be.
9As the cloud is consumed and vanishes away, so he who goes down to Sheol will come up no more.
10He will return no more to his house, neither will his place know him any more.
11“Therefore I will not keep silent. I will speak in the anguish of my spirit. I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.
12Am I a sea, or a sea monster, that you put a guard over me?
13When I say, ‘My bed will comfort me. My couch will ease my complaint,’
14then you scare me with dreams and terrify me through visions,
15so that my soul chooses strangling, death rather than my bones.
16I loathe my life. I don’t want to live forever. Leave me alone, for my days are but a breath.
17What is man, that you should magnify him, that you should set your mind on him,
18that you should visit him every morning, and test him every moment?
19How long will you not look away from me, nor leave me alone until I swallow down my spittle?
20If I have sinned, what do I do to you, you watcher of men? Why have you set me as a mark for you, so that I am a burden to myself?
21Why do you not pardon my disobedience, and take away my iniquity? For now will I lie down in the dust. You will seek me diligently, but I will not be.”
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Questions this passage answers
Why does God allow suffering?
Scripture never gives one tidy reason for all suffering. It says that pain entered a good world through sin, that God is neither its author nor its prisoner, that he uses it without approving of it, and that he entered it himself in Christ rather than explaining it from a distance. The Bible answers the question with a person before it answers it with an argument.
Why does God seem silent?
God's apparent silence is felt by some of the most faithful people in Scripture, not only by the weak in faith. David, Job and Habakkuk all cried out into what felt like empty air. Scripture never rebukes them for asking. It records their words as prayer, answers them in its own time, and teaches that God's silence is never his absence.