Job Chapter 10
From The Open Bible Project
10:1 "My soul is weary of my life. I will give free course to my complaint. I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.
- (a) I am more like a dead man, than to one that lives.
- (b) I will make an ample declaration of my torments, accusing myself and not God.
10:2 I will tell God, 'Do not condemn me. Show me why you contend with me.
- (c) He would not that God would proceed against him by his secret justice, but by the ordinary means that he punishes others.
10:3 Is it good to you that you should oppress, that you should despise the work of your hands, and smile on the counsel of the wicked?
- (d) Is it agreeable to your justice to do me wrong?
- (e) Will you be without compassions?
- (f) Will you gratify the wicked and condemn me?
10:4 Do you have eyes of flesh? Or do you see as man sees?
- (g) Do you do this of ignorance.
10:5 Are your days as the days of mortals, or your years as man's years,
- (h) Are you inconstant and changeable as the times, today a friend, tomorrow an enemy?
10:6 that you inquire after my iniquity, and search after my sin?
10:7 Although you know that I am not wicked, there is no one who can deliver out of your hand.
- (i) By affliction you keep me as in a prison, and restrain me from doing evil, neither can any set me free.
10:8 "'Your hands have framed me and fashioned me altogether, yet you destroy me.
- (k) In these eight verses following he describes the mercy of God, in the wonderful creation of man: and on it grounds that God should not show himself rigorous against him.
10:9 Remember, I beg you, that you have fashioned me as clay. Will you bring me into dust again?
- (l) As brittle as a pot of clay.
10:10 Haven't you poured me out like milk, and curdled me like cheese?
10:11 You have clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews.
10:12 You have granted me life and loving kindness. Your visitation has preserved my spirit.
- (m) That is, reason and understanding, and many other gifts, by which man excels all earthly creatures.
- (n) That is, the fatherly care and providence by which you preserved me, and without which I would perish immediately.
10:13 Yet you hid these things in your heart. I know that this is with you:
- (o) Though I am not fully able to comprehend these things, yet I must confess that it is so.
10:14 if I sin, then you mark me. You will not acquit me from my iniquity.
10:15 If I am wicked, woe to me. If I am righteous, I still shall not lift up my head, being filled with disgrace, and conscious of my affliction.
- (p) I will always walk in fear and humility, knowing that no one is just before you.
10:16 If my head is held high, you hunt me like a lion. Again you show yourself powerful to me.
- (q) Job being sore assaulted in this battle between the flesh and the spirit, breaks out into these affections, wishing rather for short days than long pain.
10:17 You renew your witnesses against me, and increase your indignation on me. Changes and warfare are with me.
- (r) That is, diversity of diseases and in great abundance; showing that God has infinite means to punish man.
10:18 "'Why, then, have you brought me forth out of the womb? I wish I had given up the spirit, and no eye had seen me.
10:19 I should have been as though I had not been. I should have been carried from the womb to the grave.
10:20 Aren't my days few? Cease then. Leave me alone, that I may find a little comfort,
- (s) He wishes that God would leave off his affliction, considering his great misery and the shortness of his life.
10:21 before I go where I shall not return from, to the land of darkness and of the shadow of death;
- (t) He speaks this in the person of a sinner, that is overcome with passions and with the feeling of God’s judgments and therefore cannot apprehend in that state the mercies of God, and the comfort of the resurrection.
10:22 the land dark as midnight, of the shadow of death, without any order, where the light is as midnight.'"
- (u) No distinction between light and darkness but where there is very darkness itself.
