Like a slave who longs for the shadow, and like a hired hand who looks for his wages,
Job is answering his friends. He reaches for two pictures everyone knew: a slave serving out his time, and a hired worker watching the sun. Both images carry the same complaint — an appointed end should come, and for Job it never does.
A term of service that should end
Job argues from ordinary working life. A soldier's term runs out. A slave's service ends. Job cannot see why his own should not.
William KellySo Job pleads for a fairer judgment of his heavy trial, and of the wild words that came with it. It was easy for others to hand out moral lessons while they sat at ease. For him, crying out was as unavoidable as it is for a starving animal. He admitted the blows came from God, and he only wanted to be crushed, since his conscience was clear. Hope for this life was gone… When a man has served out his time as a soldier or a slave, may he not retire? It was his grief that he could not, after days and nights of misery beyond words.
The shadow the worker watches for
The shadow Job means is the evening shade that tells a worker his day is over. The sting is that the worker gets his evening and Job gets none.
William Kelly"Like a slave who longs for the shadow" — the shade of evening, when he has finished his work — "and like a hired hand who looks for his wages, so I am allotted months of emptiness, and nights of misery are apportioned to me." Each day the servant and the hired man had their break from 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, unbroken suffering."
Wages: the wrong basis for dealing with God
The hired-man image shows how Job was thinking about God — as an employer who pays according to work done.
Leslie M. Grant"Has not man a hard service on earth, and are not his days like the days of a hired hand?" How many people are like Job in this. They see their relationship with God as that of a hired man working for a righteous employer. If they do right, they should be paid well. If they do wrong, they expect to be paid back with pain. But Job was suffering agonising pain. Was this his pay for the good he had done?
The same writer draws out what God was after instead:
Leslie M. GrantGod was trying to teach Job that his relationship to Him must not be that of a man working for wages. It must be that of a man whom God loved and who loved God back. Such a man does good out of a heart of love, and expects no payment for it. Job did not understand this at the time, and neither did his friends.
What Job's friends should have felt
Job's friends heard all of this. One writer weighs how they responded.
F. B. HoleYou cannot read the first section without being struck by the sadness of his plight. He felt it deeply himself, so he put it into moving words. "Months of emptiness" and "nights of misery" had been his lot. Just as a servant or hired man longed for the evening shade and for his wages, Job was longing for the end. Like a weaver's shuttle his days raced away, and he was hopeless. He describes his pitiful state very clearly, and his friends should have been far more full of compassion.
Turning to God, but seeing only wrath
Job's picture of life here is true as far as man can see. One writer sets beside it what that view leaves out.
Samuel RidoutThis is beautifully poetic, and true as far as man's view goes… It is the funeral song of human life ever since sin brought in death. "But the steadfast love of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him" (Ps. 103:15-18). Ah, Job sees only the dark side. He turns to God here, but he speaks of wrath and not of mercy.
Yet Job's reading of the future was wrong. The same writer says God "had designed greater blessing for him in the future than he had ever known before" (Leslie M. Grant).
Summary
- Term — Job's image is a fixed span of service. A soldier or slave serves out his time and goes free. Job asks why his own release never comes.
- Shadow — The shadow is the evening shade that ends a day's labour. Even hard workers get their night of rest; Job's suffering ran unbroken through day and night.
- Wages — The hired-man picture shows Job's real problem. He treated God as an employer who pays by results, and his friends thought the same.
- Love — God was teaching something else: do good out of love for Him, and expect no payment.
- Dark side — Job turns to God here, but speaks of wrath instead of mercy. He reads his future as hopeless. God had greater blessing waiting for him than he had ever known.