Job Chapter 7
Please read: Job 7 –
In this second half of Job’s response, he speaks directly to God out loud. He believes that the torment he is suffering has come from God’s hand and he does not understand why. That’s a question that often comes up in difficult times and stops people in their tracks. For some the question of why there is suffering is too much to comprehend and so all faith in God is dismissed. Job was different, He did not curse God for all the calamities that had just entered his life, He understood that God is God and could do what He pleases. Job also knew that there was sin in the world and with it a curse. What Job didn’t know about was how God had boasted in heaven about his servant Job. God had boasted about how Job was an upright man and He knew that Job would not ever curse Him. But the devil could not leave that alone.
Job in his great agony and despair thinks about why the sin of man would affect so great a God. He asks the question if he had sinned or transgressed in some way. As his friend Eliphaz had suggested – he must have sinned. Job honestly could not think of a sin he had committed but asks the question anyways. And he asks why God would bother with him. He asks why God would continue to test him. Job was confused.
“Its simple meaning was that God is so great that even if a man did sin, it cannot affect Him. The answer is that this was altogether too small a thought of God: the truth being that God is so great that He is affected, wounded, robbed by human sin. Job was, like his friends, hindered by a philosophy too narrow.” [Morgan]
Let's Reflect
1. Contrary to the life Job had where he was so wealthy and blessed, he now describes his life as like someone who must do continual hard labor, or like a slave. He also describes his life as what as seen in verse 3?
2. Let’s remember that Job has lost all 7 of his children, all his livestock and now is afflicted with some terrible disease where he is covered in painful boils that cover his body from head to toe. He has no appetite. He is not even able to sleep, no matter where he tries to sleep. What happens when he tries to sleep?
3. We learn more about something that is afflicting him in verse 5 that is just horrible. What is it?
4. It is no wonder that Job feels that he is dying and that he wishes that God would just allow him to die. At this point he feels that the God who watches him would no longer be able to watch him if he went to Sheol (the grave). To go to Sheol would mean rest for him, because a man in Sheol does not do what according to verses 9 and 10? Later in the book Job will have a different understanding about death.
5. In verse 11 Job declares that he is going to do what?
6. According to verse 16 Job knows that humans do not live forever so he asks God to do what?
7. What is Job’s overall opinion of what God is doing to him according to verse 20?
