Bible Commentaries
Job 10

Verses 1-22

Job 10:1-22 . Job’ s tone becomes sharper. He accuses God of having created him only to torment him. What profit is there to God in destroying the work that has cost Him so much pains? ( Job 10:3)? Is God short-sighted, so that He sees faults where they do not exist ( Job 10:4)? How can He be, when He is eternal ( Job 10:5)? Yet He inquires after Job’ s sin, torturing to make him confess ( Job 10:6 f.). Job reminds God how He has made him ( Job 10:10 f. describes according to the poet’ s physiology the formation of the embryo; cf. Psalms 139:13). God had given him life and preserved him ( Job 10:12); yet all the while secretly purposing to torture him. This is Job’ s darkest thought concerning God (compare the thoughts of Caliban upon Setebos in Browning’ s poem): God appears as the Great Inquisitor ( Job 10:14 f.) : contrast Psalms 130:3 f. Job, marvellously made, is marvellously treated ( Job 10:16). God renews His witnesses against Him, i.e. sends ever fresh and fresh pains to accuse him of sin. Host after host is against him ( Job 10:17). Again as in Job 10:3, Job asks why he was born ( Job 10:18 f.). Since, however, God has not spared him the tragedy of life, let Him grant that at least his last few days may be painless, before he departs into the deep gloom of Sheol ( Job 10:20-22).

Job 10:3 . Probably the last clause should be struck out (Duhm, Peake). It does not harmonise with the context.

Job 10:15 . Peake would read with slight emendation “ sated with shame and drunken with sorrow.”

Job 10:16 . The first line is difficult and the meaning is somewhat uncertain.