Job 7:13–16

These were mostly divans, low raised seats around the room. They served for reclining on in the day and for sleeping on at night, which explains why they are often called 'beds.'

Each day they got relief from their work. The work may have been hard, but they still had their night of ease and rest. "But I have nothing day or night. It is all the same terrible suffering that never lets up."

Job builds on the feeling he has expressed. He says he will not restrain his mouth. He will speak in the anguish of his spirit and complain in the bitterness of his soul (v.11). If we give way to our feelings, the effects will always be this way: we shall not be able to restrain our mouths. Sober wisdom and care for the truth will teach us to hold our words back. Our feelings will lead us to speak without thinking.

When he looked for comfort in lying down in his bed, he says they "scare me with dreams and terrify me with visions." He refers to the vision Eliphaz claimed to have had. Job thought it was not for his comfort, but to frighten him. That moved him all the more to choose to die.

Job's piety made him own that God not only must be, but was, concerned in all these calamities; and he was right so far. Job did not blame the Sabeans or the Chaldeans, the lightning, the storm, or the disease. He looked far beyond these secondary causes. He was right to bring God into the trouble. But he was wrong, as we find at the end. He supposed either that there was nothing to correct in his soul, or that God could be anything other than gracious while faithful to him.

The real secret of all Job's false reasoning is that he did not understand the character of God, or the purpose of all His dealings. He did not see that God was testing him. He did not see that God was behind the scenes, using various agents to accomplish His wise and gracious ends. Even Satan himself was a mere instrument in the hand of God.

God knew what His servant Job needed, and Himself brings forward his case and sets all in movement. Satan is only an instrument — an ignorant though clever instrument — to bring about God's purposes of grace. For Job's good, God lets him have his way up to a point. The aim is to bring Job to know his own heart, and so to a deeper ground of practical relationship with God.

When all is quiet at last, God can speak. Paul and Silas: "about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them" (Acts 16:25). Of King Ahasuerus we read: "On that night the king could not sleep" (Esther 6:1). Then he learned things he had ignored before, and so he set matters right. So insomnia, or sleeplessness, can sometimes be a hidden blessing. In any case it is always a good habit when we suffer from sleeplessness to praise and pray.

But in the second part Job clearly turned toward God, and began to address Him with his bitter complaint. He realised his own littleness. He was not something great, like a sea or a sea-monster. He cries out that his very nights are a torment. They are filled with dreams and visions of terror which, he feels, come to him from God. He loathes his present life and tells God that he wants to die.

When he looked for comfort in lying down in his bed, he says they "scare me with dreams and terrify me with visions." He refers to the vision Eliphaz claimed to have had. Job considered it was not for his comfort, but to frighten him. This moved him all the more to choose to die. So he declares bitterly, "I loathe my life; I would not live forever. Leave me alone, for my days are a breath." We can understand that Job would prefer to be left alone rather than have the cold criticism of his friends.

Satan used a misapplication of truth in the speeches of Job's friends. Job 6 shows that this gave Job a terrible shaking. He said, "Oh that my vexation were weighed, and all my calamity laid in the balances! For then it would be heavier than the sand of the sea." "For the arrows of the Almighty are in me; my spirit drinks their poison; the terrors of God are arrayed against me." This was a great mistake. They were the arrows of Satan. God was not against Job. If Job had only known it, God was for him.

How great is the distress of soul when Satan can insinuate that God is against the believer! How he will magnify every trial, every affliction!

Some passages link dreams with trifles and empty things. Even so, the Scriptures give abundant evidence that God often made His mind known to people through dreams. He did this not only with those who obeyed Him, but also with those outside Israel. God said that He would instruct His prophets in dreams. He also used dreams in the case of Nebuchadnezzar and of Daniel, to reveal His will and purpose concerning the future.

Elihu speaks of two different ways in which God deals with man. The first is in a vision of the night, in a dream. When there was no Bible, no written revelation of God, God spoke to man individually by dreams and visions. He does not do so any longer. We now have His completed Word, in which He makes His will known to us. God deals with man this way for a purpose. It is to draw him back from an evil way and to warn him. Then he may leave the pride he nourishes in his heart. It keeps his soul from the pit and his life from perishing by the sword.

Sometimes we have a little of that experience; but how little it is compared with Job's, and how very quickly it gives place. But God was putting him into the furnace so that he might come out purer than ever. He was under the hand of God, but he begs God's hand to bring it to an end.

Was he a sea, or a sea-monster, so uncontrollable that he must be allowed no relief, not even at night? The horrors were enough to make him prefer strangling — any death — rather than that such bones as his should live on. What was mortal man, that God should make so much of him, and try him as he was tried without a break?

When he looked for comfort in lying down in his bed, then he says, "You scare me with dreams and terrify me with visions." He refers to the vision Eliphaz claimed to have had. Job took it as meant not for his comfort but to frighten him, and this moved him all the more to choose to die.

Day gave him no pleasure, night no rest; he prefers death to life, which he "loathes." (vv. 15, 16.) Yet he is unbroken. In prosperity his goodness is a basis for self-satisfaction, and now in adversity — sent to remove this — he complains! Such is man under instruction. Not until he says, "now my eye sees you," does he say, "therefore I despise myself."

He gives us a history of his troubles, with disappointment in his friends added to the list. He is occupied with defending himself, though at the same time only the more convinced that his days are worthless, saying, "My soul chooses strangling and death rather than life." What lessons of anguish one has to learn before one sees the wisdom of giving up self! How tormented the soul is by one suggestion after another — suggestions that could never reach or trouble it except for the amount of self that exists. It is the possibility that a charge might be true which makes it painful and irritating.

There was no question of Job's end. There was no question that God would receive him, and He had already received him in spirit. So there was no fear of death in Job; he looked at it and even desired it. But that would spoil the great lesson. God would allow him to be tried thoroughly, but would not allow Satan so to torment him as to end his life.

The first thought after waking to a full sense of one's misery, and the most bitter one, is to curse one's day. Where God is not known, that leads to suicide. But where God is known, as in Job's case, it is the beginning of healthy action — not in the discontent it uncovers, but because the sense of death, of utter removal from everything, is known and felt... Death, because of such present misery, is preferred. To live in it has no attraction for the heart. This Job feels. He does not know that God is seeking to make him a witness of dependence on Himself against Satan. But this is God's way. Discipline may have the effect of making us feel that death is preferable to life, but it is working out God's purpose.

In the second part Job turned Godward, and began to address Him with his bitter complaint. He realized his own littleness. He was not something great, like a sea or a sea-monster. In verses 13-16 he cries out that even his nights are a torment, with dreams and visions of terror which, he feels, come to him from God. He loathes his present life and tells God that he wants to die.

God was putting him into the furnace so that he might come out purer than ever... "My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle, and are spent without hope." It was always something coming, just like the rapid way a weaver passes his shuttle every moment. "Oh, remember that my life is wind; my eye shall no more see good."... "As the cloud is consumed and vanishes away" — that is what he compared himself to. "So he who goes down to the grave shall come up no more" — that is what he wanted, that it should end... "My soul chooses strangling, and death rather than my life." It is not that he would have done it, but that is what would have ended his suffering... He had no thought of such a thing. He was under the hand of God, but he begs God's hand to close it.

Poor, suffering, despairing Job! To think of Him whose love had been so fully shown in the past as his enemy, and to pray to Him, "Let me alone," was indeed horrible despondency. And if he has sinned, why does not God pardon and take away his iniquity? But this is not confession of sin. It is a different thing when he finally cries out, "Behold I am vile, I abhor myself."

Job himself was in the dark about these things. He knew God's eyes were on him, that He was with him, and that He had set His heart on man — and yet he was ready to argue with God, almost to accuse Him. Day gave him no pleasure, night no rest; he prefers death to the life he "loathes" (vv. 15, 16). Yet he is unbroken. In prosperity his goodness was a basis for self-satisfaction, and now in adversity — sent to remove this — he complains! Such is man under instruction. Not until he says, "My eye sees you," does he say, "Therefore I abhor myself."

God is his enemy, watching as if he were the tossing sea ready to overleap its bounds, or some monster of the waters to be captured and destroyed. Day and night His hand was heavy on him... Poor sufferer! And he was attributing it to his best Friend!

He was tired of life. That was not a feeling of faith. There is very often much more faith in being willing to live than in wishing to die... But once we know the Saviour, we may wince under the trial we face in this world. Elijah did, and he wished to die, wished to get out of the trial — certainly a most unbelieving wish... Death to a believer is gain, but still we ought not to wish for that gain until the Lord's time for it comes. We ought to want to do His will; that is the only right wish for a saint.

Can you not say, with the hymn, "I would not live always"? We are to wait here and serve Him for a time. But if the Lord Jesus does not come soon, the brightest thing for us is to be taken to be with Him, to be "absent from the body" and at home with the Lord.