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Job 7

The TorahRooted Bible (TRB), translated directly from the Hebrew and Greek.

The hard service of man

1 Has not man a hard service on earth, and are not his days like the days of a hired worker? 2 Like a slave who longs for the shade, and like a hired worker who waits for his wages, 3 so I have been allotted months of emptiness, and nights of misery have been appointed to me. 4 When I lie down I say, "When shall I arise?" But the night drags on, and I am full of tossing until the dawn. 5 My flesh is clothed with worms and clods of dust; my skin hardens, then breaks out again. 6 My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle, and they come to their end without hope.

Job speaks to Elohim

7 Remember that my life is a breath; my eye will not again see good. 8 The eye of him who sees me will behold me no more; Your eyes will be on me, but I will be gone. 9 As a cloud fades and vanishes, so he who goes down to Sheol does not come up; 10 he will not return again to his house, nor will his place know him anymore.

11 Therefore I will not restrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul. 12 Am I the sea, or a sea monster, that You set a guard over me? 13 When I say, "My bed will comfort me, my couch will ease my complaint," 14 then You frighten me with dreams and terrify me with visions, 15 so that my soul would choose strangling, death rather than these bones of mine. 16 I loathe my life; I would not live forever. Let me alone, for my days are a breath.

What is man?

17 What is man, that You make so much of him, and that You set Your heart upon him, 18 that You visit him every morning and test him every moment? 19 How long will You not look away from me, nor let me alone till I swallow my spittle?

20 If I have sinned, what have I done to You, O watcher of mankind? Why have You set me as Your target, so that I am a burden to myself? 21 Why do You not pardon my transgression and take away my iniquity? For now I will lie down in the dust; You will seek me, but I will not be.

Notes

  • 7:6 "Without hope" is literally "at the end of the thread," for tiqvah means both "hope" and "cord" (as in Joshua 2:18). Job's days fly like a shuttle, and run out with the thread: a wordplay that only works in Hebrew.
  • 7:9 Sheol is the realm of the dead (see the note at Genesis 37:35). Job speaks here of what any man can see: the dead do not come back to their homes in this life (verse 10). He will wrestle with the question of life after death later (14:14; 19:25-27).
  • 7:12 "Sea monster" is tannin, used of the great creatures of the sea (Genesis 1:21) and, in poetry, of the chaotic powers that Elohim restrains (Psalm 74:13; Isaiah 27:1; compare Leviathan in 3:8). Job asks bitterly why Elohim watches and hems in a frail man as if he were a cosmic threat.
  • 7:17 These words echo the question of Psalm 8:4 (compare Psalm 144:3), but turn it around: there the psalmist marvels that Elohim cares for man; here Job, in his pain, asks why Elohim will not leave so small a creature alone, testing him "every moment" (verse 18).
  • 7:20 The Hebrew reads "a burden to myself"; the Greek translation reads "a burden to You." Later Jewish tradition lists this among the tiqqune soferim, "corrections of the scribes," places where the scribes are said to have softened an expression that spoke irreverently of God. Scholars differ on which reading is earlier; the TRB follows the Hebrew.

Job 6 · Job 8

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