Have you eyes of flesh? Do you see as man sees?
Job is in deep pain, and his three friends have decided his suffering proves hidden guilt. In chapter 10 he turns from them and asks God directly: do You search for faults the way men do?
The setting of the question
This question falls inside a long, dark complaint. One writer traces the shape of Job's reply to Bildad — God's supreme power, His inaccessibility, Job's weakness, the longing for someone to arbitrate — and then reaches chapter 10, where the restraint gives way:
Samuel RidoutWords fail to describe the misery of Job that would lead him to speak like this against God. It is not the bodily suffering that has wrung this bitter cry from him; he has lost, or is in danger of losing, faith in God's goodness. … He will ask God why He contends with him. 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 the flesh, failing to see the inward parts?
What "eyes of flesh" is asking
Job is asking whether God is searching him for faults, the way his three friends have been doing.
Leslie M. GrantWas God coming down to the level of a mortal man? Was He busy searching out what might be sin in Job, as his three friends were doing — although, as Job says, God knew that Job was not wicked? The friends might suppose that Job was guilty of hidden wickedness, but God knew this was not true. Still, God's hand was heavy on Job, and no one could deliver him from that hand. In fact God's hand was working blessing for Job that he did not understand at the time. It was good for Job to be kept in God's hand, even when it felt hard.
A small creature under enormous power
Job feels the gap between himself and the God who is dealing with him. One writer catches it in a picture:
William KellyHe compares himself to a butterfly broken on the wheel. There is this terrible wheel for criminals, and he, a mere butterfly, is all broken down — God, in all His uncontrollable power, dealing with such a poor, weak man as he; every part of his body throbbing with pain, and every nerve strained with agony from head to foot.
A clear conscience is not the same as standing before God
Job's protest that God knows he is not wicked was honest, and true as far as it went. But a good conscience is not the ground a man stands on when God looks at him.
William KellyJob had a perfectly good conscience, and so he says, "Where is it? I want to learn where it is and why it is." "You know that I am not wicked." That he would say to God, and it was perfectly true. That was not the trouble. The trouble was his own satisfaction in that poor reflection of righteousness which the best of men can have in themselves here on earth. It is no ground at all to stand on before God.
The arbitrator Job could not find
Job's question presses the distance between God and man. He had already said that he could find no one to stand between them:
William Kelly"For He is not a man, as I am, that I might answer Him, that we should come to trial together. There is no arbiter between us." That is what Christ became. Christ became the mediator between God and men. And He is not just a mediator: He is a mediator who is equally divine with the God before whom He acts as mediator for us.
A purpose Job could not yet read
Job could not square God's past kindness with the way God was treating him now.
Leslie M. GrantGod had shown Himself very kind and considerate towards Job in the past. So Job could not understand why God should now act so differently with him. "Yet these things You hid in Your heart," he says. But since this was true, God must have a good reason for hiding His counsels. Job ought to have realised that God would reveal His mind in His own time.
Summary
- Question. Job asks whether God sees the way men do. The doubt came from his fading trust in God's goodness, not from his pain.
- Flesh. Human eyes have to search to find guilt. Job asks whether God has stooped to that. God already knew he was not wicked.
- Conscience. Job's clear conscience was genuine, yet a man's best self-assessment is no ground to stand on before God.
- Mediator. The gap Job feels — no shared court, no one between — is the very place Christ came to fill, as a mediator who is fully divine.
- Hidden. What God hides is not hostility but timing. He reveals His mind when He chooses. Patience would have served Job better than complaint.