Job 10:3

Since there was no mediator, Job in this chapter (from verse 2 on) directs all of his words to God. He reasons with Him about why God should deal with him the way He was doing. He begins his complaint by repeating that his soul loathes his life. So he lets his bitter complaint run free, speaking straight to God and pleading with Him, "Do not condemn me." God had not condemned him at all, though his sufferings made him feel that He had.

And now the darkest of all. It is not so much the physical agony, the boils and running sores torturing him. It is the bitter awareness that he is losing his hold on God. He is starting to see Him no longer as a loving friend, but as a harsh, immovable tyrant. It is a death struggle he is passing through. What accusations are here! Bold language indeed for a creature of dust, and such an afflicted creature as he was.

It is true that Job was the work of God's hands. His own nature, as one born of God, was God's own workmanship. But it was not true that God was despising His own work. Job felt that way, and felt it most when he saw that wicked men appeared to prosper some of the time. Yet not all the wicked prosper all the time.

What could Job do then? He could only complain and plead against God's condemnation of him. He did not know why God contended with him like this, while He shone on the counsel of the wicked. It was all the harder to understand. God is not blind or fleeting like man. He needed no investigation to find sin, and He knew the innocence of the sufferer. That sufferer could not escape, and yet he was God's own carefully made creature, kept from first to last as if for these very things. But in this painful protest against God, one thing stands out: Job still speaks to God and pleads with Him. He does it even while he is as unjust toward God as he thinks God is unjust toward him.

He is weary of life, and might as well pour out all his thoughts against God. Yet he pours out all those thoughts before the eye of God. May not this very abandonment of misery suggest the root of faith in his heart? He will at least tell God to His face that he doubts Him: "though He slay me." 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?

Still, God's hand was heavy on Job, and no one could deliver Job from that hand. In fact, God's hand was accomplishing a blessing for Job that he did not then understand. So it was good for Job to stay in God's hand, even when he felt it to be hard.

In one respect it was true that God was contending with Job, and Job did not learn why until the last chapter of this book. He needed this painful experience to learn that his own nature was sinful, and to learn the pure grace and goodness of the Lord Himself.