Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle 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.
The Picture Behind the Words
Job describes his own beginning with images from the dairy. Commentators take the second image plainly: it is milk that has thickened and set.
Morrish Bible DictionaryCurdled 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.
Samuel RidoutWill 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's Argument to God
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.
William Kelly"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 Answer Job Missed
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.
Leslie M. GrantNone 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.
Leslie M. GrantGod'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.
Where the Real Wound Is
Job's deepest trouble here is not the pain in his body.
Samuel RidoutIt 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.
Man, Deliberately Made
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.
James McBroom"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.
Summary
- 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.