Job 7:13

These were mostly divans, low raised seats around the room. They served for reclining on in the day and for sleeping on at night, which explains why they are often called 'beds.'

Each day they got relief from their work. The work may have been hard, but they still had their night of ease and rest. "But I have nothing day or night. It is all the same terrible suffering that never lets up."

Job builds on the feeling he has expressed. He says he will not restrain his mouth. He will speak in the anguish of his spirit and complain in the bitterness of his soul (v.11). If we give way to our feelings, the effects will always be this way: we shall not be able to restrain our mouths. Sober wisdom and care for the truth will teach us to hold our words back. Our feelings will lead us to speak without thinking.

When he looked for comfort in lying down in his bed, he says they "scare me with dreams and terrify me with visions." He refers to the vision Eliphaz claimed to have had. Job thought it was not for his comfort, but to frighten him. That moved him all the more to choose to die.

Job's piety made him own that God not only must be, but was, concerned in all these calamities; and he was right so far. Job did not blame the Sabeans or the Chaldeans, the lightning, the storm, or the disease. He looked far beyond these secondary causes. He was right to bring God into the trouble. But he was wrong, as we find at the end. He supposed either that there was nothing to correct in his soul, or that God could be anything other than gracious while faithful to him.

The real secret of all Job's false reasoning is that he did not understand the character of God, or the purpose of all His dealings. He did not see that God was testing him. He did not see that God was behind the scenes, using various agents to accomplish His wise and gracious ends. Even Satan himself was a mere instrument in the hand of God.

God knew what His servant Job needed, and Himself brings forward his case and sets all in movement. Satan is only an instrument — an ignorant though clever instrument — to bring about God's purposes of grace. For Job's good, God lets him have his way up to a point. The aim is to bring Job to know his own heart, and so to a deeper ground of practical relationship with God.

When all is quiet at last, God can speak. Paul and Silas: "about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them" (Acts 16:25). Of King Ahasuerus we read: "On that night the king could not sleep" (Esther 6:1). Then he learned things he had ignored before, and so he set matters right. So insomnia, or sleeplessness, can sometimes be a hidden blessing. In any case it is always a good habit when we suffer from sleeplessness to praise and pray.