Thy hands have bound me together and made me as one, round about; yet dost thou swallow me up!
Job stops arguing with his friends and appeals to God. He points to the hands that formed him, and asks how those same hands can now be breaking him. Commentators read this cry from two sides. It shows real insight into how God makes us. It is also a complaint that says more than Job had any right to say.
Job's conscience was clear, and he says so to God. One writer hears an unspoken "after all the love You have shown me" behind that appeal, and shows how Job's frailty becomes part of the plea.
Job had a perfectly good conscience, and so he says, "You know that I am not wicked." That he would say to God, and it was perfectly true. His trouble was not wickedness. It was his own satisfaction in that poor reflection of righteousness which the best of men can have here below in themselves. That is no ground at all to stand on before God. "Your hands fashioned and made me, and now You destroy me" — after all the love You have shown me. "Remember that You have made me like clay." He had not made him an angel. He had not made him someone above this kind of suffering.
The same verse that fuels the complaint holds the answer to it. If the body God built is past our understanding, His dealings will be too.
God's hand was heavy on Job, and no one could deliver Job from that hand. In fact God's hand was working blessing for Job that he did not then understand. It was good for Job to stay in God's hand, even when that hand felt hard. "Your hands have made me and fashioned me, an intricate unity" (v.8)… none of us can understand how the eye, the ear, the tongue, the brain and the heart work in such an amazing way. Nor can we understand how they all act in perfect unison. For this is God's work, much beyond our understanding. So we should expect God to do things with us that are higher than we can understand.
(Grant follows an older translation, which reads "an intricate unity" here; the ESV does not use that phrase.)
The first line of the verse says where a human being comes from. One writer draws out what follows from that.
Let God be true, and every man a liar. Let me study the circulatory system, plasma, the nervous system, the brain, the eye or any other part of the body … "give me understanding …" Then I will know that God created me. I will know that I am a responsible intelligent human being answerable to Him.
Job's sense of his own uprightness was real, but it hardened. One writer lists this verse among the places where that happens.
But these spiritual affections in Job did not stop him from turning this sense of integrity into a robe of self-righteousness. That robe hid God from him, and even hid him from himself. He declares himself to be more righteous than God (Job 10:7-8; 16:14-17; 23:11-13; 27:2-6).
So how should we read words like these? The book is God's word. The speeches inside it record what men said.
We must remember that the book of Job is inspired. Even so, it would be a great mistake to accept that the speeches are inspired… part of the value of the book is that we have the mistakes of the speakers. Every one of the three friends was very much mistaken in what he said, and Job himself also.
The wound here is not in Job's body but in his confidence in God's goodness. Notice, though, whom he turns to as he says it.
Bodily suffering is not what has wrung this bitter cry from him. He has lost, or is in danger of losing, faith in God's goodness… He is weary of life, and might as well pour out all his thoughts against God… he pours out all those thoughts before the eye of God. May not this very unrestrained misery suggest the root of faith in his heart? He will at least tell God to His face that he doubts Him.
- Made by those hands. Job argues from his own making. God shaped him as clay, not as an angel, so the frail thing under God's hand is God's own handiwork.
- Held by those hands. The hand Job could not escape felt heavy, yet it was working blessing he could not yet see.
- Hands past explaining. No one can explain how eye, ear and heart work together. God's dealings with you will run higher than your understanding too.
- Misjudging those hands. A clear conscience is not a standing before God. Job's sense of integrity hardened until he called himself more righteous than God. The book records the speeches as mistakes, not as doctrine.
- Still speaking to those hands. Job tells God to His face that he doubts Him. He takes his misery nowhere else, and that is where faith is still alive.
Remember, I beseech thee, that thou hast made me as clay, and wilt bring me into dust again.
In his darkest speech Job stops arguing with his friends and turns on God. He uses God's own workmanship as evidence against Him. He asks his Maker to remember the material He used. Then he asks whether that same Maker means to crush him back to powder.
Clay carries a settled meaning in Scripture.
Clay is not metal. Its use as a picture in Scripture shows what is human in contrast to what is Divine: see Job 10:9 and Job 33:6. It also lies behind the references to man as clay in the hands of God, who is the Potter.
Job asks God to take account of the material He used.
"Your hands have made me and fashioned me together all around; yet you destroy me" — after all the love you have shown me. "Remember, I beg you, that you have made me as the clay." God had not made him an angel. He had not made him someone above such suffering.
Job presses God with questions about the work of His own hands.
He will ask God why He contends with him in this way. Is it any pleasure to Him to despise the work of His own hands, and let the wicked go unpunished? Does God judge according to what is outward, failing to see the inward parts? Are His days so short that He must punish evil before it appears — worse, when He knows a man is innocent? "Will You pursue a worm to death?"
Commentators find the real wound below the level of Job's body.
It is not bodily suffering that has wrung this bitter cry from him. Instead, he has lost, or is in danger of losing, faith in God's goodness. There is hardly a gleam of light in his whole speech. In the closing part (Job 10) he lets himself go in the dark despair that has settled on his soul.
Job's words then paint God as something He is not.
It is as if Job, in his blindness, confesses by his own words that he is in the hands of an all-powerful, merciless being. Not a God of love and justice, but an enemy.
The hand pressing him down was the very hand he should have wanted to be under.
God's hand was heavy on Job, and no one could deliver Job from that hand. Yet God's hand was working blessing for Job that he did not then understand. So it was good for Job to be kept in God's hand, even when he felt that hand to be hard… Job complains that God, who made him so marvellously, is now seeking to destroy him. Did he have to tell God to remember that He had made him like clay? But he felt he was being turned into dust again, the moisture gone out of the clay.
Job's complaint carries its own answer.
Job says that God has hidden these things in His heart. However, since this was true, God must have a good reason for hiding His plans. Job ought to have realised that God would reveal His mind in His own time.
Job's dread of dust is not his alone. It rests on the whole human race, and it comes from God Himself.
Unlike God, who is eternal, mortal man is turned to destruction. As children of Adam we lie under the original sentence: "you are dust, and to dust you shall return" (Gen. 3:19)… Man stands before us a poor, feeble mortal creature; and the point is, that he is this by the express act of God.
Job asks God to remember what he is made of. Scripture answers that He does.
"He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust." Precious, surely, should that word "remembers" be. An earthly parent may forget it or ignore it; God never will. Those who fear Him can always count on His compassion.
- Clay means creature. In Scripture clay stands for what is human as opposed to what is divine — man in the hands of God, who is the Potter.
- Made, not made an angel. Job's plea is that God would take his frailty into account: he was not formed to be above this kind of suffering.
- The argument turned inward. Job turns God's skill in making him into evidence against God. In doing so he slips from trusting God's goodness to treating Him as an enemy.
- The heavy hand was the helping hand. The same hand was working blessing Job could not yet see. God hid His plans for good reason, and would reveal them in His own time.
- Remembered dust. Job begs God to remember he is dust. Scripture answers that God never forgets: He knows our frame, and His compassion rests on that.
Hast thou not poured me out as milk, and curdled me like cheese?
Job 10 is a lament. In pain and unable to see why, Job argues his case with God — and he argues it from the care God took in making him, before he was born.
Job describes his own beginning with images from the dairy. Commentators take the second image plainly: it is milk that has thickened and set.
Curdled milk, which in some cases is dried and is solid enough to be cut into slices. 1 Sam. 17:18; 2 Sam. 17:29; Job 10:10.
So the picture moves from liquid to solid: the unformed becoming a body. One writer reads the whole passage this way. Job points to the delicate work God did on him, then asks whether that same God will now undo it.
Will He take the frail being His hands have shaped with such skill — the delicate clots of milk, the "intricately woven" substance of skin and flesh, bones and sinews (see Ps. 139:15-16)? Will He bring it back to the dust it came from?
Job is not admiring his own making for its own sake. He is using it as evidence. God took trouble over him — and is now, he feels, taking him apart.
"Your hands fashioned and made me, and now You have destroyed me altogether" — after all the love You have shown me. "Remember that You have made me like clay." He had not made him as an angel. He had not made him as someone above suffering like this… "Yet these things You hid in Your heart." 'You had that in Your heart before I was born. You meant me to come into this, and I do not know why.'
Job accepts that God planned his whole frame. What he cannot accept is that the plan included this.
The intricacy Job describes could have led him somewhere better than complaint. One writer draws the lesson: a body no one can explain should prepare us for dealings we cannot explain.
None of us can understand how the eye, the ear, the tongue, the brain and the heart work in such an amazing way. Nor can we understand how they all act in perfect unison. This is God's work, far beyond our understanding. So we should expect God to do things with us that are also higher than we can understand. If Job would only trust God patiently, God would make things clear to him in time.
The same writer goes further. The hand Job felt as heavy was doing him good.
God's hand was accomplishing blessing for Job that he did not then understand. So it was good for Job to be kept in God's hand, even when he felt it to be hard.
Job's deepest trouble here is not the pain in his body.
It is not the suffering in his body that has wrung this bitter cry from him. He has lost, or is in danger of losing, faith in God's goodness… He is weary of life, and might as well pour out all his thoughts against God… May not this very abandonment of misery suggest the root of faith in his heart?
Job says these things to God, not behind His back. That address is itself the last thread of trust.
The verse also stands on its own, as plain testimony about how every human being comes to be. One writer links it back to the moment God decided to make man at all.
"The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life." Job 33:4… This takes us back to the conversation in Eden, when God deliberated over the creation of man… We do not read of any other part of the moral creation that God deliberated over beforehand. Neither do we read of any who were so created that later they could be re-created and become a new creation in Christ.
- Made. Milk poured out and set like cheese: God shaped the unborn body with care and skill.
- Marked. Job uses that skill as his argument: hands that took such care over him should not now be destroying him.
- Mystery. He is left saying God hid this in His heart before he was born: the plan was there, but not the reason.
- Missed. A body he cannot explain should have prepared him for dealings he cannot explain. His part was to wait.
- Meant. Job's danger was losing confidence in God's goodness. Yet he poured out even his doubts to God's face, and that was the root of faith still alive in him.
Thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews;
Job has stopped arguing with his friends and started arguing with God, and his evidence is his own body. He has just called himself clay. Now he points to skin, flesh, bones and sinews as proof of careful work, and asks why his Maker would undo it.
Job's plea is not that he matters, but that he is God's handiwork. Ridout lines up the questions Job puts to his Maker.
He will ask God why He contends with him this way — is it any pleasure to Him to despise the work of His own hands, and to let the wicked go unpunished? Does God judge according to the flesh, failing to see the inward parts? … Will He take the frail being His hands shaped with such skill — like the delicate clots of milk, like the "curiously wrought" substance of skin and flesh, bones and sinews (see Ps. 139:15-16) — and bring them back to the dust they came from? God has given him breath and life, and yet has hidden enmity in His heart against His own handiwork!
("Curiously wrought" is the older wording of Psalm 139:15; the ESV has "intricately woven.")
Job's complaint has a sharp edge: God chose the material. He made a creature who could be hurt this way, and He knew it in advance.
"Remember, I beg you, that you have made me as the clay." He had not made him as an angel; He had not made him as one who was above this kind of suffering. "Have you not poured me out like milk, and curdled me like cheese? You have clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews. You have granted me life and favour, and your care has preserved my spirit. And these things you have hidden in your heart." "You had that in your heart before I was born. You meant me to come into this, and I do not know why."
Kelly notes that Job could truthfully say he was not wicked — and that this was exactly his problem:
It was his own satisfaction in that poor reflection of righteousness which the best of men can have here below in himself, but which is no ground at all to stand on before God.
The verse says God clothed me with skin and flesh — so the "me" is something other than the skin and flesh. One writer traces this through the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament. It keeps separate words for soul and spirit inside this one chapter.
"My soul (psuche) is weary of my life. I will speak in the bitterness of my soul (psuche)." (v. 1.) "Your care has preserved my spirit (pneuma)." (v. 12.) "You have clothed me" (the man Job; that is, both soul and spirit) "with skin and flesh, and have fenced me with bones and sinews." (v. 11.)
(Older translations read "fenced me with bones and sinews"; the ESV has "knit me together.")
If the body is a garment, wearing it is temporary. The same writer follows that thought to the hour of death.
The body is the man's house or tent on earth. It is the home of both spirit and soul. So while he is in it, he is said to be "at home in the body." While in the body he is also said to be "clothed." (Job 10:11.) But he leaves the body at death. … The body alone is the part of man that is mortal.
Job's despair in this chapter is not his last word. The same man who describes God knitting his body together also expects to see God in his flesh. What death dissolves is not the whole man.
Job … knew himself as one who would exist after death. He speaks of that event, and of the time when the worm will have destroyed this outward visible frame. He says, "yet in my flesh I shall see God." (Job 19:26.) That is: I, the man Job, the whole workmanship of God, "spirit, soul, and body," "in my flesh I shall see God." Death destroys only this outer shell, the dwelling that holds both spirit and soul. And even that destruction, for man, is only for a time.
Ridout is blunt about the state Job is in. Job "lets himself loose in the dark despair which has settled down upon his soul" — yet he pours it all out before God, not away from Him.
- Made. God chose the material — clay, not angel — and formed a creature who could suffer like this. That is what Job cannot get past.
- Clothed. Skin and flesh are the garment, bones and sinews the frame. The "me" wearing them is the man himself, soul and spirit.
- Skilled. God wove every thread of that garment with skill. So Job asks why He would undo His own work.
- Complained. Job argues from God's past kindness to what now feels like cruelty. He says all of it to God's face.
- Reclothed. Death lays the garment down, but only the outer shell dissolves. Job still expects that in his flesh he will see God.
Thou hast granted me life and favour, and thy care hath preserved my spirit;
Job has just told God that His hands shaped him like clay and clothed him with skin and flesh. Now, mid-complaint, he admits that his life and every day of it came as a gift — which makes his present ruin harder, not easier, to understand.
Job is not denying God's goodness. He is piling it up as evidence, and it sharpens his question: why would the Maker destroy what His own hands formed? One writer follows that argument line by line and ends with Job's unspoken thought. He quotes an older English version, which says "favour" and "visitation" where newer ones say "steadfast love" and "care".
"Your hands have made me and shaped every part of me; yet You destroy me" — after all the love You have shown me. "Remember, I beg You, that You have made me as the clay." He had not made him as an angel; He had not made him as one who was above this kind of suffering. "Have You not poured me out as milk, and curdled me like cheese? You have clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews. You have granted me life and favour, and Your visitation has preserved my spirit. And these things You have hidden in Your heart." "You had that in Your heart before I was born. You meant me to come into this, and I do not know why."
The word "spirit" here is exact. Chapter 10 uses three different words for what a person is, and the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament keeps them apart.
In this same translation, one chapter (Job 10) speaks of all three parts that make up man, and it keeps the same distinction between the words. "My soul (psuche) is weary of my life. I will speak in the bitterness of my soul (psuche)" (v. 1). "Your visitation has preserved my spirit (pneuma)" (v. 12). "You have clothed me" — the man Job, that is, both soul and spirit — "with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews" (v. 11).
That distinction also shapes what Job expects after death, as his own later words show.
Job spoke of all three — "spirit, soul, and body" (see Job 10:1, 11, 12). He probably lived long before anyone wrote the book of Genesis, and he knew himself as one who would exist after death. Speaking of that time, when the worm would have destroyed this outward, visible body, he says, "Yet in my flesh I shall see God." (Job 19:26.)
Job's next line admits that God has kept something hidden in His heart. One writer says that silence had both a reason and a limit.
God had shown Himself most kind and considerate of Job in the past. So Job could not understand why God could now be acting so differently from the way He had dealt with him before. "These things You have hidden in Your heart," he says (v.13). However, since this was true, God must have a good reason for hiding His plans, and Job ought to have realised that God would reveal His mind in His own time.
God's care for Job's soul and body from birth is the very thing Job now reads as a trap. He feels God kept him alive only for this. Yet he keeps talking to the God he is accusing.
Job could not escape, and yet he was God's own carefully formed creature, kept alive from first to last as if for these very things. He was doomed either way, right or wrong, and afraid to insist on what was right in case it brought worse… But in this bitter protest against God, it has been noticed that Job speaks to God and pleads with Him, even while he is as unjust toward God as he thinks God is unjust toward him.
Job's despair is real, yet he aims it at God rather than at the dark. One writer reads that as a sign of faith still alive underneath.
He is weary of life, and might as well pour out all his thoughts against God. He does not stand staring into the darkness in silent despair, as a poet described. Instead he pours out all those thoughts before the eye of God. Could this very surrender to misery point to a root of faith in his heart? He will at least tell God to His face that he doubts Him: "though He slay me."
- Gift. God granted life and favour; Job never earned them. His own argument starts from what God's hands made and gave.
- Guarded. God's care kept the whole man — spirit, soul and body — from birth onward.
- Hidden. What God had not yet told Job was not missing. He held it in His heart and would reveal it in His own time.
- Wronged. Job charges God unjustly and still addresses Him — misjudging God while refusing to let go of Him.
- Rooted. Job pours his doubt out before God's own eye — and that is where faith still shows.