CHAPTER 10 Dec. 8 
Job Continues His Response to Bildad
My soul is weary of my life. I will give free course to my complaint. I will speak in the bitterness of my soul. 2I will tell God, ‘Do not condemn me. Show me why You contend with me. 3Is it good to You that You should oppress, that You should despise the work of Your hands, and smile on the counsel of the wicked? 4Do You have eyes of flesh? Or do You see as man sees? 5Are Your days as the days of mortals, or Your years as man’s years, 6that You inquire after my iniquity, and search after my sin? 7Although You know that I am not wicked, there is no one who can deliver out of Your hand. 8Your hands have framed me and fashioned me altogether, yet You swallow me up. 9Remember, I beg You, that You have fashioned me as clay. Will You bring me into dust again? 10Haven’t You poured me out like milk, and curdled me like cheese? 11You have clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews. 12You have granted me life and grace. Your visitation has preserved my spirit. 13Yet You hid these things in Your heart. I know that this is with You: 14If I sin, then You mark me. You will not acquit me from my iniquity. 15If I am wicked, woe to me. If I am righteous, I still shall not lift up my head, being filled with disgrace, and conscious of my affliction. 16If my head is held high, You hunt me like a lion. Again You show Yourself wonderful to me. 17You renew Your witnesses against me, and increase Your indignation on me. Changes and warfare are within me. 18‘Why, then, have You brought me forth out of the womb? I wish I had given up the spirit, and no eye had seen me. 19I should have been as though I had not been. I should have been carried from the womb to the grave. 20Aren’t my days few? Cease then. Leave me alone, that I may find a little comfort, 21before I go where I shall not return from, to the land of darkness and of the shadow of death; 22the land dark as midnight, of the shadow of death, without any order, where the light is as midnight’.

Commentary

10:4 See on 9:33. Job through his sufferings came to so wish that God could fully appreciate things from a human perspective. Unknown to him at the time, Job was coming to long for the real, Biblical Christ- a man of our nature yet God’s Son, our representative who could empathize with us and reveal the human face of God.
10:8 See on 9:24.
10:9 Will You bring me into dust again- Job had no belief in an ‘immortal soul’; he believed the Biblical position, that we are made from dust and will return to dust again, with no inherent immortality. This is alluding to Gen.3:19- the curse upon sinful Adam that he would return to the dust. Job seems to be admitting that he is like Adam in that it appeared God was going to end his life as a result of his sin- return him to the dust. But he reasons that this is unfair, seeing he has not sinned (10:7,14,15). Thus he oscillates between saying he has sinned and is like Adam, and then claiming that although he is being treated like Adam this is unfair. Similarly Job complains "He bruises me...without cause" (9:17); the same word translated "bruise" in Gen.3:15, thus implying that he is receiving the result of the punishment in Eden for no reason. 27:2-4 also alludes to the record of God's creation of Adam in Gen.2:7. In 31:33 Job denies that he is like Adam in that unlike him, he has no sin to hide: "If I covered my transgressions as Adam, by hiding mine iniquity...". And yet like Adam he was humiliated by God's questioning at the end of the book. See on 13:20-22; 14:20. We too oscillate between accepting our sinfulness and yet considering our judgment for it as unfair. We are all brought like Job to the crushing and total acceptance of it in the end.  
10:16 Again You show Yourself wonderful to me-  Job felt as we sometimes do that one moment God is tender and gracious, but the next almost violent and rough with us. But this is only because we fail to perceive the full picture of God. 
10:21 I go where I shall not return from- Job’s faith in resurrection and ultimate salvation oscillated; for in 19:25-27 he is very clear about it. It could be, however, that Job was forced to a belief in resurrection, judgment and reward at the last day by his sustained reflection on the fact that he as a basically good man was so suffering, the wicked were prospering, and yet God is a God who [for all Job’s doubts of the moment] must ultimately reward the righteous and the wicked.