Job 7:16

In the second part Job turned Godward, and began to address Him with his bitter complaint. He realized his own littleness. He was not something great, like a sea or a sea-monster. In verses 13-16 he cries out that even his nights are a torment, with dreams and visions of terror which, he feels, come to him from God. He loathes his present life and tells God that he wants to die.

God was putting him into the furnace so that he might come out purer than ever... "My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle, and are spent without hope." It was always something coming, just like the rapid way a weaver passes his shuttle every moment. "Oh, remember that my life is wind; my eye shall no more see good."... "As the cloud is consumed and vanishes away" — that is what he compared himself to. "So he who goes down to the grave shall come up no more" — that is what he wanted, that it should end... "My soul chooses strangling, and death rather than my life." It is not that he would have done it, but that is what would have ended his suffering... He had no thought of such a thing. He was under the hand of God, but he begs God's hand to close it.

Poor, suffering, despairing Job! To think of Him whose love had been so fully shown in the past as his enemy, and to pray to Him, "Let me alone," was indeed horrible despondency. And if he has sinned, why does not God pardon and take away his iniquity? But this is not confession of sin. It is a different thing when he finally cries out, "Behold I am vile, I abhor myself."

Job himself was in the dark about these things. He knew God's eyes were on him, that He was with him, and that He had set His heart on man — and yet he was ready to argue with God, almost to accuse Him. Day gave him no pleasure, night no rest; he prefers death to the life he "loathes" (vv. 15, 16). Yet he is unbroken. In prosperity his goodness was a basis for self-satisfaction, and now in adversity — sent to remove this — he complains! Such is man under instruction. Not until he says, "My eye sees you," does he say, "Therefore I abhor myself."

God is his enemy, watching as if he were the tossing sea ready to overleap its bounds, or some monster of the waters to be captured and destroyed. Day and night His hand was heavy on him... Poor sufferer! And he was attributing it to his best Friend!

He was tired of life. That was not a feeling of faith. There is very often much more faith in being willing to live than in wishing to die... But once we know the Saviour, we may wince under the trial we face in this world. Elijah did, and he wished to die, wished to get out of the trial — certainly a most unbelieving wish... Death to a believer is gain, but still we ought not to wish for that gain until the Lord's time for it comes. We ought to want to do His will; that is the only right wish for a saint.

Can you not say, with the hymn, "I would not live always"? We are to wait here and serve Him for a time. But if the Lord Jesus does not come soon, the brightest thing for us is to be taken to be with Him, to be "absent from the body" and at home with the Lord.