Job 7:6–7

"My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle, and are spent without hope." That is, something was always coming — as fast as a weaver passes his shuttle, moment by moment. "Oh, remember that my life is wind; my eye shall no more see good. The eye of him that has seen me shall see me no more; Your eyes are upon me and I am not. As the cloud is consumed and vanishes away" — that is what he compared himself to.

When a man has served his time as a soldier or a slave, may he not retire? It was Job's grief that he could not, after unspeakable days and nights of hopeless misery. Yet he was only a wind or a cloud. As he thought of it, he had to speak again in his anguish.

Job has challenged his friends to test him. Now he goes back to dwelling on his sufferings, in view of how short life is. These sleepless nights of "tossings to and fro" run on through months of unrelieved pain. They make him long for that "appointed time" set for all flesh. He longs for it with the eager desire of a hired worker waiting for the close of his day's work. Already the signs of the grave are on him, the worm and the clod. Any slight healing of his sores is only the signal for a fresh outbreak.

His days were spent without hope, expecting never to see good again (vv.6-7). So to him his future appeared bleak and hopeless. How wrong he was! — for God had designed greater blessing for him in the future than he had ever known before; and in fact eternity has infinitely greater blessing yet.

But God was putting him into the furnace so that he might come out purer than ever.

The Old Testament hope was like Job's. Outside the present scene there was little light. Death was a deep, dark "shadow," almost impossible to see through. Resurrection, and restoration to a scene of blessing on earth, was the tangible, plain thing.

We pause to ask a question. Have we ever thanked God enough that we walk in the light of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead? ... What was not made known was this: for the saint, resurrection will mean entering a new and incorruptible order of things. Our Lord showed this when He rose from the dead.

Job himself was in the dark about these things. In this chapter he even shows how ready he was to argue with God, and almost to accuse Him. That was so even though he knew God's eyes were on him (v. 8), that He was with him (v. 19), and that He had set His heart on man (v. 17). ... Day gave him no pleasure, night no rest; he prefers death to the life he "loathes" (vv. 15, 16). Yet he is unbroken. ... Not until he says, "My eye sees You," does he say, "Therefore I despise myself."