#642 The Worm

“Has not man a hard service on earth,

and are not his days like the days of a hired hand?

2 Like a slave who longs for the shadow,

and like a hired hand who looks for his 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 arise?’

But the night is long,

and I am full of tossing till the dawn.

5 My flesh is clothed with worms and dirt;

my skin hardens, then breaks out afresh.

6 My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle

and come to their end without hope.

7 “Remember that my life is a breath;

my eye will never again see good.

8 The eye of him who sees me will behold me no more;

while your eyes are on me, I shall be gone.

9 As the cloud fades and vanishes,

so he who goes down to Sheol does not come up;

10 he returns no more to his house,

nor does his place know him anymore.

11 “Therefore I will not restrain my mouth;

I will speak in the anguish of my spirit;

I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.

12 Am I the sea, or a sea monster,

that you set a guard over me?

13 When I say, ‘My bed will comfort me,

my couch will ease my complaint,’

14 then you scare me with dreams

and terrify me with visions,

15 so that I would choose strangling

and death rather than my bones.

16 I loathe my life; I would not live forever.

Leave me alone, for my days are a breath.

17 What is man, that you make so much of him,

and that you set your heart on him,

18 visit him every morning

and test him every moment?

19 How long will you not look away from me,

nor leave me alone till I swallow my spit?

20 If I sin, what do I do to you, you watcher of mankind?

Why have you made me your mark?

Why have I become a burden to you?

21 Why do you not pardon my transgression

and take away my iniquity?

For now I shall lie in the earth;

you will seek me, but I shall not be.” Job 7 ESV

Some commentators and translations communicate the hard work and service to be a comparison of Job's present state to that of being drafted into a horrible war. I have not asked to be here, nor did I ask to be born. He has already expressed, in his grief, the desire for that day to be blotted out. It feels like slavery, and he desires the shade of rest, the calm of sleep, but instead he has insomnia most the time. When he does finally drift off from shear exhaustion, it is a restless sleep, filled with nightmares and torment. Mostly he lays waiting for the night to be over. He is a zombie, a living corpse, full of maggots and skin that dries and cracks, oozing once again. Anyone who has ever had insomnia knows the agony of the clock, it is mocking, ticking away and making you count the minutes, saying to yourself, if I fall asleep now then I shall have this much rest. Later you look at the clock and say, now this much, and on and on. He loathes his life and for that we cannot slight him because it is in pain without rest. What can you say to him that will help? Swifter than a weavers shuttle, as it runs out of thread, there is no more hope of the day, time flies even when you are not having fun, but the night lies. It comes on cool, promising relief, but only terror of the mind and stiffness of the body, the wanting of the warmth of the sun.

In verse 11 he describes a pain that goes beyond worm, deeper than the muscle, separating soul and marrow. His spirit aches, and all he can do is cry up, because here, on this plane, he sees no relief from men. They could only kill him or say stupid things, but oh, if we ever came to this point over the disappointment of our sins. He feels the attentive eye of God, but not the shadow of His wings. Am I this great monster that you must guard me so? What is more scary, me or the lion, me or the bear? I will tell you Job, you are a man and men are so much more frightening than the sea, the monster, the lion or the bear. If you really want to know, men fail everyday at seeing the image of God in their fellow man. If God was not mindful of us then we would have destroyed each other long ago, at Babel, but here we are because God is mindful of men. In ways this foreshadows the cross, but while Job would have God look away, that is when Christ cries out, "Eloi, Eloi, lema sebachthani?" 

If I sin, then what is it, I am sorry, I won't do it again, why won't you forgive me? In every age there seems to be a few men that will stand and preach the word of God, even under great pressure, like C.H. Spurgeon, as he stood and tried to call the church back to the glory of God. Look what he says of this chapter below:

Once more, we benefit from knowing the story-behind-the-story, which Job and his friends do not know at this point in the narrative. Job believed that God was against him and was punishing him, but it wasn’t true. “Job was not being punished; he was being honored. God was giving to him a name like that of the great ones of the earth. The Lord was lifting him up, promoting him, putting him into the front rank, making a great saint of him, causing him to become one of the fathers and patterns in the ancient Church of God. He was really doing for Job such extraordinarily good things that you or I, in looking back upon his whole history, might well say, ‘I would be quite content to take Job’s afflictions if I might also have Job’s grace, and Job’s place in the Church of God.’” (Spurgeon)