Who is Job speaking to in verse-7? Is he speaking to God, or to his friends at this point? All the Biblical scholars I’ve read say he turns to God at this point, lamenting over his life and wonders why these things have happened to him. However, I have my doubts that this is so. I wonder, if Job isn’t still speaking with his friends. Certainly, by verse-17 Job lifts his voice to God, but in these ten verses, Job 7:7-16, I think he’s probably still speaking to his friends. So, he asks them to remember that his life is but wind or a breath, and that he will never know good again. What do they expect from him, when all the real living is over? He celebrated his wedding decades ago, and he raised a family, but, now, they are gone, and he was probably mourning their deaths in the seven days of silence in Job 2:13. He was once a celebrated figure in the city gate, where folks sought after his advice. Nevertheless, none of these things will be enjoyed ever again (Job 7:7). All the good in life is behind him. It’s all in the past, and he will know it no more!
In Genesis 2:7 we read: “The LORD God formed the man from the soil of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” And, Job describes his life as breath or wind. Life is nothing more than breathing out and breathing in, and if that stops, one is dead. Life is the wind or one’s breath, and Job asks his friends to think about that. Job breathes in and he breathes out, but all the good in that wind is gone. He may even be struggling with each breath as implied in verse-15.
Job believes he is dying and is very close to death at this point. So, he says: “the eye of him who sees me now, will see me no more” (Job 7:8). He tells his friends that they will seek him but be unable to find him. In other words, if any of them wish to say anything to him or do anything for him, he should consider what he says or does now, because it may be the last thing they are able to say or do, as that pertains to their friendship. Is this how you wish to remember our last time together? You may regret what you’ve said, if that’s the case.
Job continues in this perspective by saying his life is like a cloud that is dispersed and disappears. Indeed, Job will die and be put in his grave (Job 7:9), but he will never return to the land of the living. He will never again return to his house, vis-à-vis he will never again return to his body, nor will his body (once alive and aware) ever know him again (Job 7:10.[1]
Therefore, knowing this, Job pulls out all stops. If he put a guard on his tongue before, he has taken it away now, because he has nothing to lose (Job 7:11), for all the good in life is in the past. Job will not keep himself from crying out in his pain, and asking: “why me,” and, really, why is it wrong to do that? Why would anyone, either God or man, find fault with Job for speaking out and questioning God?
Job then asks why they had set a guard on him (Job 7:12). Is he the raging sea or some terrible sea monster that needs to be kept in its place? Is he such a threat to others or a threat to the Lord’s purposes, if he cries out in his pain to ask: “Why?”
Next, Job tells them, if he, (Job) would look to the comfort of sleep or rest, he (God) scares him with dreams and visions (Job 7:13-14). Why would God want to do that? Is it to keep Job from complaining about his constant pain? Is it to keep him from questioning God—why me? What purpose is there in what the Lord is doing (cp. Job 7:6)? What harm is there in what I am saying?
Finally, Job tells the friends that he would prefer the pain of strangling and die than to live on in apparent endless and pointless pain (Job 7:15). He doesn’t want to cling to life, as though it were an endless commodity. Job doesn’t want to live forever, at least not in his present condition! He loathes his life, as it is, and he would prefer that God would simply leave him alone and let him die in relative peace (Job 7:16). This is a picture that his friends fail to consider, because they simply don’t understand, due to the worldview they embrace.
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[1] What Job says here has profound implications upon what many believe today about our resurrection. Many interpret 1Thessalonians 4:16-17 to mean the dead will rise from literal graves in the body, which they had when they were alive, but it will be changed into something immortal. Job denies this interpretation, and the Lord later told Eliphaz: “My anger is stirred up against you and your two friends, because you have not spoken about me what is right, as my servant Job has” (Job 42:7; emphasis mine). If Job spoke correctly, modern Christianity’s interpretation of 1Thessalonians 4:16-17 is wrong. We shall not return to our physical bodies after we die. Instead, we’ll be given new, spiritual, bodies as we are told in 1Corinthians 15:35-38 “But someone will say, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?’ Fool! What you sow will not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare seed – perhaps of wheat or something else. But God gives it a body just as he planned, and to each of the seeds a body of its own” (emphasis mine). If one is not raised as the seed body, but a different body that is according to God’s plan for that particular life form, then how can we return to this body of flesh after we die and are raised to life again?
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