Am I the sea, or a sea monster, that you set a guard over me?
Job has stopped answering his friends. He now speaks straight to God, out of months of pain and sleepless nights. He compares himself to the sea and the monster in it — the two things in creation that need a guard. Why, he asks, watch a man who is wasting away?
The words behind the question
The second image in the verse is not a named animal. The Hebrew word used here is a broad one, covering the great creatures of the deep:
Morrish Bible DictionaryThe word tannin, in Genesis 1:21; Job 7:12; Ezekiel 32:2, and the Greek word kētos in Matthew 12:40, refer to any sea monsters, without defining any particular one. In the King James Version the Hebrew word tannin is also translated "dragon," "sea monster," and "serpent."
So Job names the two wildest things he can think of. One writer follows the complaint through and shows what the guard means to Job: no break, day or night:
William KellyWhen a man has served out his time as a soldier or a slave, may he not go free? It was his grief that he could not, after days and nights of hopeless misery beyond words. Yet he was only a wind or a cloud. As he thought of it, he had to speak again in his anguish. Was he a sea, or a sea monster, so out of control that he got no rest, not even at night, from horrors bad enough to make him prefer strangling — any death — to living on with bones like his?
The charge hidden in the question
A question can carry an accusation. Job is not asking for information. He is saying that God treats him like a dangerous force to be fenced in:
Samuel RidoutGod is his enemy, watching him as if he were the tossing sea, ready to burst past its limits, or some monster of the waters to be caught and killed. Day and night His hand was heavy upon him. Poor sufferer! And he was attributing it to his best Friend!
Who is doing the watching
Commentators differ on who Job has in mind. Some read the guard as God's. Another reads it as pressure from Job's three friends, and ties the outburst to Job's choice to say whatever he feels:
Leslie M. GrantIf we give way to our feelings, the effect will always be the same: we will not be able to hold our tongues. Sober wisdom and concern for the truth will teach us to hold back our words, but our feelings will lead us to speak without thinking. "Am I the sea," Job asks — that is, a huge, uncontrolled creature, or simply a sea serpent, so set on its own way that Job's friends think they must impose their authority on him.
A small man asking a large question
The comparison cuts both ways. Job takes his complaint straight to God, and in the same breath admits how small he is:
F. B. HoleBut in the second part Job turned to God, and began to speak to Him with his bitter complaint. He realized his own littleness. He was not something great, like a sea or a sea monster.
Why God would not let him alone
Job wants the watching to stop. One writer gives the reason it does not stop. It is the opposite of the enmity Job suspected:
The Christian's FriendWhat is the secret of the unhappiness and restlessness of many a saint? A hankering after rest here. So God must discipline and train that soul. He may allow some circumstance to expose the real state of the heart, by touching the very thing the will is set on. Circumstances would not trouble us if they did not find something in us contrary to God; they would pass by like the wind. God deals with what hinders communion in us, and what keeps us from seeking rest in Him alone. His discipline is the constant, tireless work of love, which does not rest now, so that we may enter into His rest.
Summary
- Watched. Job feels guarded like the sea and the sea monster, the wild things that need fencing in. Why treat a dying man the same way?
- Misread. He reads the watching as hostility. He is "attributing it to his best Friend," and builds a case against the One who is dealing with him.
- Unrestrained. Job chose feeling over sober wisdom, so his words run ahead of the truth. Commentators differ on whether the guard he resents is God's or his friends'.
- Small. The same question that protests God's attention admits how small he is. He is no sea, only a man.
- Loved. The watching he wants lifted is love at work, not an enemy at the gate. Its discipline "does not rest now, so that we may enter into His rest."