Job 7: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Job goes on with his reply, comparing human life to the hard labor of a hired worker and describing his own sleepless nights, his sores, and how fast his days are running out. He says he will not keep quiet, and he turns from his friends to speak straight to God, asking why God watches him so closely, frightens him with dreams, and will not leave him alone or pardon his sin. He ends by saying that soon he will lie down in the dust, and when God looks for him he will be gone.

Claim by Claim

1. 7:1
   • Job asks whether man has a term of hard service on earth.
   • Job asks whether man's days are like the days of a hired laborer.
2. 7:2
   • A slave pants for the shadow.
   • A hired laborer waits for his wages.
3. 7:3
   • Job says months of emptiness have been allotted to him.
   • Job says nights of misery have been appointed to him.
4. 7:4
   • When Job lies down he asks when he will get up.
   • The night is drawn out for Job.
   • Job is full of tossing to and fro until the twilight of dawn.
5. 7:5
   • Job's flesh is clothed with worms and clods of dust.
   • Job's skin hardens and then breaks open again, or scabs over and festers; the wording is ambiguous between the skin cracking and the skin running with matter.
6. 7:6
   • Job's days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle.
   • Job's days come to an end without hope.
7. 7:7
   • Job asks God to remember that his life is a breath of wind.
   • Job says his eye will not return to see good.
8. 7:8
   • Job says the eye of the one who sees him will behold him no more.
   • Job says God's eyes will be on him and he will not be there.
9. 7:9
   • A cloud is used up and goes away.
   • In the same way, the one who goes down to Sheol does not come up again.
10. 7:10
    • The dead man does not return again to his house.
    • His place does not recognize him any more.
11. 7:11
    • Job says he will not restrain his mouth.
    • Job says he will speak in the distress of his spirit.
    • Job says he will complain in the bitterness of his soul.
12. 7:12
    • Job asks whether he is the sea or the sea-monster.
    • Job asks why God sets a guard over him.
13. 7:13
    • Job says his bed will comfort him.
    • Job says his couch will bear away his complaint.
14. 7:14
    • God frightens Job with dreams.
    • God terrifies Job with visions.
15. 7:15
    • Job's soul chooses strangling.
    • Job chooses death rather than his bones.
16. 7:16
    • Job loathes his life.
    • Job says he would not live forever.
    • Job asks God to leave him alone.
    • Job says his days are a breath.
17. 7:17
    • Job asks what man is that God should make him great.
    • Job asks why God should set his heart upon man.
18. 7:18
    • Job asks why God visits man every morning.
    • Job asks why God tests man every moment.
19. 7:19
    • Job asks how long God will not look away from him.
    • Job asks that God let him alone long enough to swallow his spittle.
20. 7:20
    • Job says he has sinned; the statement may be meant as a condition, 'if I have sinned'.
    • Job asks what he has done to God.
    • Job calls God the watcher of mankind.
    • Job asks why God has set him as a target to shoot at.
    • Job says he has become a burden to himself.
21. 7:21
    • Job asks why God does not pardon his transgression.
    • Job asks why God does not take away his iniquity.
    • Job says he will soon lie down in the dust.
    • Job says God will seek him and he will not be there.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

7:1

"Appointed time" translates a Hebrew word used for military service or a term of forced labor, a fixed tour of duty a man does not choose and cannot cut short. The "hired worker" is a day laborer, hired one day at a time and paid at nightfall, at the bottom of the economic ladder.

7:2

Two everyday pictures of waiting. A slave working outdoors watches for the evening shadows that end the day's work; a day laborer watches for sunset because that is when his wages are handed over. Both want the day to be over, and neither can hurry it.

7:3

"Vanity" in the King James does not mean pride. It translates words meaning emptiness, futility, a breath of air with no substance to it, so months "of vanity" are months that add up to nothing.

7:5

The "worms" are maggots, which breed in open untreated sores. Job is describing a real skin disease in physical detail, not speaking figuratively.

7:6

A weaver's shuttle carries the crosswise thread and is thrown from hand to hand across the loom, the fastest-moving thing in an ordinary household. There is also a pun in the Hebrew that cannot be carried into English: the word for "hope" here is the same as the word for "thread." His days run out like thread off the spool.

7:7

The Hebrew word is "wind" or "breath", not a comment on the soul, but on duration. A breath is real, and then it is gone and cannot be gathered back.

7:9

"The place of the dead" is Sheol, the underworld of Hebrew thought: the common destination of everyone who dies, pictured as a shadowy pit below the earth. In the language of this book it is not a place of reward or punishment, simply the place from which no one returns.

7:10

The Hebrew pictures the place itself as knowing or recognizing a person. For his house and land to stop knowing him is for every trace of him to be gone, as though he had never lived there.

7:11

"Soul" in the King James usually translates nephesh, which means a person's whole living self, not some immaterial part tucked inside the body. "The bitterness of my soul" is bitterness in the whole of him.

7:12

In the older stories of the region, the sea and the sea-monster (Hebrew *tannin*, a dragon or great deep-water creature) were forces of chaos that had to be defeated and then kept penned up under guard. Job's point is sarcastic: he is one sick man, not a cosmic monster needing a sentry posted over him.

7:14

Dreams and visions were understood as normal channels through which a god delivered a message to a person, and Job's friend Eliphaz has already claimed one of his own in chapter 4. Job's complaint is that the same channel reaches him only as terror.

7:15

The last phrase is literally "more than my bones", his wasted frame, his body as it now is. Some read it as "rather than these bones of mine," others as "rather than my sufferings"; the Hebrew is compressed and both readings are defensible.

7:16

The Hebrew verb has no stated object. It can mean "I reject/loathe [my life]" or "I waste away." Translators have to choose; the original leaves both open.

7:17

"What is a human being, that you should make so much of him" is a set formula of praise, the same words open a well-known psalm, where God's attention to small humanity is a wonder. Job turns the formula inside out: to be watched that closely is not an honor but a torment.

7:18

"Visit" in the King James does not mean a friendly call. It means to come and inspect, the way an official turns up to check on someone. "Try" means to test or examine, the word used for testing metal to see how pure it is.

7:19

Swallowing your own spit is a proverbial expression for the shortest imaginable pause, the equivalent of "long enough to blink." Job is asking for even that much relief.

7:20

"Set me as your target" is an archery image: a mark that arrows are aimed at. Also, ancient Jewish scribes recorded that this verse originally read "a burden to *you*," and that copyists changed it to "a burden to myself" because saying God found a man burdensome seemed irreverent. Translations still split between the two readings.

7:21

"You will look for me" continues the picture of God as a searcher who comes looking each morning (verse 18), but by then, Job says, there will be nothing left to find.