Are your days as the days of man, or your years as a man's years,
Job turns away from his three friends and puts his questions straight to God. Verse 5 asks whether God is short of time, like a man who must reach a verdict before his own life runs out.
The darkest stretch of the speech
One writer sees this chapter as the low point of Job's whole reply, and says what has really broken him.
Arno Clemens GaebeleinAnd now the darkest of all. It is not so much the physical agony, the boils and running sores torturing him. It is the bitter consciousness that he is losing hold on God. He is beginning to look on Him no longer as a loving friend, but as a harsh, unmovable tyrant. It is a death struggle he is passing through. His soul is weary of his life, and so he tells out the bitterness of his heart.
What the question asks
Verse 5 belongs to a chain of questions running from verse 4 to verse 7.
Samuel RidoutHe will ask God why He contends with him like this — is it any pleasure to Him to despise the work of His own hands and let the wicked go unpunished? Does God judge by outward appearance, failing to see the inward parts? Are His days so short that He must punish evil before it has shown itself — and worse, when He knows the man is innocent?
Searching for hidden sin
Another writer connects the question to the three friends sitting with Job.
Leslie M. Grant"Have you eyes of flesh? Do you see as man sees?" Job asks the Lord (v. 4). Was God coming down to the level of a mortal man? Was He to busy Himself searching out what might be iniquity in Job, as his three friends were doing? Yet, as Job says, God knew that Job was not wicked (vv. 5-7).
Overwhelming strength against a frail creature
Job does not dispute God's power. What staggers him is that God turns such power on someone so small.
William KellyHe compares himself to a sort of butterfly broken on the wheel. There is this terrible wheel for criminals, and he, a mere butterfly, is all broken down. God, with all His uncontrollable power, is dealing with such a poor, weak man as he.
The innocence Job pleads, and its limits
Verses 6 and 7 pull against each other. One commentator notes the strain without smoothing it over. (He quotes the verses from an older translation.)
F. B. HoleHe had just said of God, "He is not a man, as I am." So he knew that he was nothing before His holy eyes, which searched him through and through. In verse 2 he appealed to God to show him the reason why He contended with him by these disasters. In verse 6 he again admitted "iniquity" and "sin," yet in the next verse he said, "You know that I am not wicked."
The claim was true as far as it went. But a clear conscience is not the same as a standing before God.
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. It was not that. It was his own satisfaction in that poor reflection of righteousness which the best of men can have here below in themselves. But that is no ground at all to stand on before God.
What that hand was doing
Job felt God's hand as the hand of a tyrant. One writer sees the same hand differently.
Leslie M. GrantStill, God's hand was heavy on Job, and no one could deliver Job from that hand. In fact, that hand was working blessing for Job which he did not then understand. So it was good that God kept Job in His hand, even when Job felt it to be hard.
Summary
- The hurry — Are God's days like a man's days? Only a judge who is running out of time must punish evil before it shows itself.
- The mirror — Job suspects God of doing what his friends were doing: digging for a hidden sin. Their method is projected onto God.
- The mismatch — Job sees himself as a butterfly broken on the wheel. He cannot resist the power crushing him, and he cannot understand it.
- The ground — His clear conscience was real. But it was only the best righteousness a man can have in himself, and no footing at all before God.
- The hand — That heavy hand, which no one could pull him out of, was working blessing he could not yet see.