The Grammar of a Fallen World: When Hope is a Foreign Country Text: Job 7:1-6
Introduction: Arguing with God
We live in a soft and sentimental age. When confronted with suffering, the modern man has only two responses. The first is the therapeutic response, which is to offer up a series of meaningless platitudes designed to make the sufferer feel better, as though suffering were a mild headache to be cured with two aspirin and a nap. The second is the atheistic response, which is to shake a fist at an empty sky and declare that a good God cannot exist in a world with so much pain. Both are forms of profound cowardice.
The therapeutic response is cowardice because it refuses to look suffering squarely in the face. It papers over the gaping wound with cheap bandages. The atheistic response is cowardice because it runs from the only one who can actually answer the charge. The atheist has no court to bring his case to; he is simply yelling at the weather. His suffering is truly, cosmically pointless, a random twitch in a meaningless universe.
But the Bible is not a sentimental book. It is a book of rock-ribbed realism. And this is why we have the book of Job. Job is a man who has been systematically dismantled by suffering. He has lost his wealth, his children, and his health. He is sitting on an ash heap, scraping his oozing sores with a piece of pottery. And here, in our text, he opens his mouth and gives us a raw, unfiltered report from the front lines of human misery. This is not the polite prayer of a comfortable churchgoer. This is the cry of a man on the rack.
And we must understand what is happening here. Job is not abandoning his faith. He is not becoming an atheist. He is doing something far more profound, and far more faithful. He is arguing with God. He is filing a complaint. His entire speech is directed upward. He knows who is in charge. He knows that his suffering is not a meaningless accident. It has been "apportioned" and "appointed." In his anguish, Job never forgets the absolute sovereignty of God. This is the fundamental difference between a biblical lament and a secular complaint. The secularist complains about the universe. The saint complains to the God who made it. And in this, Job teaches us the first step in dealing with overwhelming affliction: you must keep God in the dock. You must continue to deal with Him, even if it is to accuse Him. To turn your back on Him is to embrace the void.
The Text
Is not man conscripted to labor on earth,
And are not his days like the days of a hired man?
As a slave who pants for the shade,
And as a hired man who eagerly hopes for his wages,
So am I apportioned months of worthlessness,
And nights of trouble are appointed me.
If I lie down I say,
‘When shall I arise?’
But the twilight continues,
And I am saturated with tossing until dawn.
My flesh is clothed with worms and a crust of dirt;
My skin scabs over and flows out again.
My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle,
And come to an end without hope.
(Job 7:1-6 LSB)
Conscripted to Toil (v. 1-2)
Job begins by universalizing his condition. He sees his personal misery as a magnifying glass for the whole human condition.
"Is not man conscripted to labor on earth, And are not his days like the days of a hired man? As a slave who pants for the shade, And as a hired man who eagerly hopes for his wages," (Job 7:1-2)
Job uses three images here: the conscripted soldier, the hired man, and the slave. This is not the language of glorious, purposeful work. This is the language of toil, of drudgery, of service under a hard master. This is a direct echo of the curse in Genesis 3. God gave Adam work in the Garden, and it was a joyful task of dominion. But when Adam fell, God cursed the ground. Work became toil, a battle against thorns and thistles, done by the sweat of the brow.
Job is saying that this is the state of man on earth. We are drafted into a hard campaign we did not choose. We are like day laborers, watching the sun, desperate for the day to end so we can get our meager pay and go home. We are like slaves, panting for the brief relief of the shade. This is a bleak picture, but it is an honest one. For the man living under the full weight of the curse, life is not a playground; it is a labor camp. He longs for two things: relief (shade) and reward (wages). But for Job, neither is coming. The sun is relentless, and payday is nowhere in sight.
The Divine Appointment of Misery (v. 3-4)
Job now brings this universal condition down to his own personal experience, and he identifies the source of his misery.
"So am I apportioned months of worthlessness, And nights of trouble are appointed me. If I lie down I say, ‘When shall I arise?’ But the twilight continues, And I am saturated with tossing until dawn." (Job 7:3-4 LSB)
Notice the verbs: "apportioned" and "appointed." Job is a good Calvinist, even in his complaint. He knows that his suffering is not bad luck. It is not the result of a chaotic, impersonal universe. A sovereign hand has measured out his portion, and that portion is "months of worthlessness." His suffering feels utterly pointless. It accomplishes nothing. It is vanity. This is a direct assault on our modern sensibilities that demand every trial be a tidy, discernible learning experience.
And the trouble is not just by day, but also by night. The night, which should bring rest and relief, brings only a different kind of torture. The day has the misery of his physical pain and the foolish counsel of his friends. The night has the misery of his own mind, turning on itself in the darkness. He lies down, hoping for the oblivion of sleep, but finds only a long, agonizing wait for a dawn that seems like it will never come. He is "saturated with tossing." It is a picture of complete, relentless agony, both physical and mental. There is no escape, no off-switch.
The Humiliation of the Flesh (v. 5)
From the torment of his mind, Job returns to the decay of his body.
"My flesh is clothed with worms and a crust of dirt; My skin scabs over and flows out again." (Job 7:5 LSB)
The language is intentionally graphic and repulsive. We are meant to be shocked. This is not a poetic metaphor for sadness. His body is literally falling apart. He is experiencing the curse of Genesis 3:19, "for dust you are, and to dust you shall return," before he has even died. His flesh is being uncreated. This is a frontal assault on all forms of Gnosticism that would treat the body as an unimportant shell. The body matters. Its health is a blessing, and its decay is a profound horror. Job's suffering is not just spiritual or emotional; it is visceral. He is living in a state of constant, physical defilement.
The Hopeless End (v. 6)
Finally, Job summarizes his condition with two devastating statements.
"My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, And come to an end without hope." (Job 7:6 LSB)
A weaver's shuttle flies back and forth across the loom, moving almost too fast for the eye to see. Job sees his life, which feels so agonizingly slow in the moment, as ultimately fleeting. The miserable days are piling up and rushing toward their conclusion. And what is that conclusion? It is an end "without hope."
This is the bottom of the pit. This is the cry of utter despair. From his vantage point, on his dung heap, looking at his decaying body and his ruined life, there is no light at the end of the tunnel. There is only the tunnel. The Bible is realistic enough to record this sentiment. It does not rush in to correct Job. It lets his words hang in the air, a monument to the reality of human despair in a fallen world. This is what it feels like when God withdraws His hand of comfort, and allows the curse to do its full work.
The Gospel in the Rubble
So what are we to do with such a passage? We must first let it do its work on us. It must strip us of our easy answers and our cheap grace. It must remind us that we live in a world that is profoundly broken, groaning under a curse. Job's condition is an extreme close-up of our own condition apart from Christ.
But this is not the end of the story. Job's cry of hopelessness is a question mark hanging over the Old Testament. Is this it? Is this the final word? And the answer thunders back in the New Testament: No.
There was another man who was "apportioned" a cup of wrath. There was another who endured a night of trouble in a garden, sweating blood. There was another whose flesh was clothed not with worms, but with the spit and blood of his tormentors. There was another whose life was cut short, swifter than a weaver's shuttle. And on the cross, He cried out from an even deeper despair, a true hopelessness, when He was forsaken by the Father.
Jesus Christ became Job for us. He entered into the land of "no hope" so that we would never have to live there eternally. He took the full, unfiltered curse upon Himself. Job felt as though his suffering was worthless, but the suffering of Christ purchased the cosmos. Job's suffering was a tool in God's hand to refine him, but Christ's suffering was the payment that redeems us.
Job ends his speech here without hope. But later in the book, in the midst of his complaints, a glorious confession breaks through like the sun through storm clouds: "For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will stand upon the earth" (Job 19:25). Job's despair was real, but it was not the final reality. The final reality is a living Redeemer.
Therefore, when we are in our own ash heaps, when we are apportioned months of worthlessness and nights of trouble, we are allowed to cry out with Job's honesty. But we are not allowed to end where he ends in this chapter. We must allow our lament to lead us to the cross. Our suffering is not meaningless, because His suffering gave meaning to everything. Our afflictions, which are but for a moment, are working for us an eternal weight of glory, far beyond all comparison. We know this not because we feel it, but because the living Redeemer has promised it. He has stood upon the earth, He has conquered the grave, and He is the glorious and final answer to Job's every agonizing question.