Job · chapter 10 of 42
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In Job 10 Job, weary of life, speaks to God without disguise: he asks him not to condemn him and to say why he contends with him. He reminds God that his hands shaped him like clay and cared for him with love, and he asks why God now seems to hunt him. He ends by asking to be left alone for a moment of cheer before going to the land of darkness.
This chapter continues Job's answer to Bildad. After saying in Job 9 that there is no arbiter between God and him, Job decides to speak anyway and to address God directly. It is a prayer, and a very bold one: a mixture of reproach, tenderness and despair that shows how Job still regards God as his Creator, even when he does not understand what God is doing.
Job begins with a confession: his soul loathes his life. So he will give free utterance to his complaint and speak in the bitterness of his soul. He says to God: do not condemn me; let me know why you contend with me. Does it seem good to you to oppress, to despise the work of your hands and favor the schemes of the wicked? Do you have eyes of flesh, do you see as man sees? Are your days as the days of a mortal, that you seek out my iniquity and search for my sin, although you know that I am not guilty and that there is none to deliver from your hand?
Then Job recalls how he was formed. God's hands fashioned him and shaped him like clay; he poured him out like milk and curdled him like cheese, clothed him with skin and flesh and knit him together with bones and sinews. He granted him life and steadfast love, and his care watched over his spirit. But Job says God hid other things in his heart: if I sin, you watch me and do not acquit me; if I am guilty, woe to me, and if I am righteous I cannot lift my head, sated with disgrace and looking on my affliction. If I lift my head, you hunt me like a lion and again work wonders against me, and bring fresh troops against me.
Then Job asks why God brought him out of the womb: would that he had died and no eye had seen him, and that he had been as though he had not been, carried from womb to grave. Are not my days few? Leave me alone, that I may find a little cheer before I go, never to return, to the land of darkness and deep shadow, the land of gloom like thick darkness, without order, where light is as darkness.
References follow ESV book names and verse numbers. Read each verse in your Bible before the explanation.
Job asks God not to condemn him and to let him know why he contends with him. It is the request of an accused person who wants to know the charge, and it reflects his conviction that his suffering must have a reason.
Job recalls that God's hands formed him and made him like clay, and asks whether God will now return him to dust. His argument is that the Creator should not destroy someone he shaped with such care.
Job says that God granted him life and steadfast love and that his care watched over his spirit. Even in the midst of his protest, Job acknowledges that God's goodness was real, and that makes his present situation more painful.
Job asks God to leave him alone for a little while to find some cheer before he goes to the land of darkness and deep shadow. His view of death is bleak, and it shows how much he needed the light Christ would bring with the resurrection.
6 questions with answers and references, ready for Sunday school, small group or a Bible quiz night.
Answer: That his soul loathes it, so he will speak in bitterness. — Job 10:1
Answer: That he not condemn him and let him know why he contends with him. — Job 10:2
Answer: That he is not guilty and that no one can deliver from God's hand. — Job 10:7
Answer: God's hands shaped him like clay, poured him out like milk and curdled him like cheese, and knit him with bones and sinews. — Job 10:8-11
Answer: Life and steadfast love, and his care watched over Job's spirit. — Job 10:12
Answer: That God leave him alone for a little cheer before he goes to the land of darkness and deep shadow. — Job 10:20-22
Job 10 is a prayer that is not afraid to say hard things. Job reminds God that he made him, and asks how it is possible that God now treats him like this. Anyone going through a dark season learns from this chapter that we can speak to God with complete frankness, without disguise and without formulas.
The chapter also invites us to remember God's goodness in the middle of pain. Job contrasts what God did for him, life and steadfast love, with what he now experiences, and that memory keeps his conversation with the Lord alive. When your group goes through a trial, help one another remember what God has already done, without denying the pain of the present.
Job 10 ends with the image of the land of darkness, which closes Job's first answer to Bildad. In Job 11 Zophar the Naamathite, the third friend, will speak. He will react angrily to Job's flood of words and tell him that God exacts of him less than his sin deserves.
Job feels treated like a guilty man without being told of what. He asks for the basic right to know the accusation. He is not denying God's authority but asking him to explain what he is doing. The book will take that request seriously at the end, when God speaks.
He asks with irony whether God sees as people do, who look at appearances and make mistakes, and whether his days are short like those of a mortal who hurriedly searches for a fault. Job knows God is not like that, and his question highlights the contrast with what is happening to him.
It is an image of the grave or Sheol, the place of the dead as the Old Testament understood it before the hope of resurrection was revealed more clearly. Job describes it as a place of total darkness, without order or light.