Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Job · About this commentary
Job: What Is Man, That You Magnify Him?
Job 7:1-21
1 “Isn’t a man forced to labor on earth? Aren’t his days like the days of a hired hand? · WEB
Job stops addressing his friends and speaks to God directly, asking to be left alone by an attention he experiences as surveillance.
The chapter begins with a working man's picture of life. A hired laborer watching for the shadow to lengthen, a servant waiting for his wages Job 7:1–2. What he wants is the end of the shift.
The symptoms are given without decoration: skin clothed with worms and clods of dust, closing and breaking open again; nights spent tossing until dawn Job 7:4–5. The book is not squeamish about what the man's body is doing.
Then the first extended statement about death, and it is bleak and clear. Life is a breath; the eye that sees him will see him no more; as the cloud is consumed and vanishes away, so he who goes down to Sheol will come up no more, and he will return no more to his house Job 7:7–10.
Read alongside what he says later, this is not despair about the resurrection. It is an accurate statement about this life: the dead do not come back to their houses, and nothing in Scripture suggests otherwise. His hope, when it appears, is for a waking at a set time Job 14:13–15, not for a return to the world he is leaving.
At verse 11 the speech turns and does not turn back. Therefore I will not keep silent. From here Job is talking to God, in the second person, and the friends are effectively an audience.
The question he puts is a deliberate inversion. What is man, that you should magnify him... that you should visit him every morning, and test him every moment? Job 7:17–18.
The psalm asks the same question in wonder — that God should be mindful of so small a creature Psalms 8:4. Job asks it as a complaint. Being noticed by God, in his condition, does not feel like dignity; it feels like being watched. The next verse says so in the plainest terms available: how long will you not look away from me, nor leave me alone until I swallow down my spittle? Job 7:19.
He is asking for three seconds of privacy.
And then a question that is more theological than it looks: if I have sinned, what do I do to you, you watcher of men? Job 7:20. He is not denying sin. He is asking what damage a man's fault could possibly do to God — a question the poem will return to when Elihu answers it Job 35:6–7.
The chapter ends on a request for pardon and an argument for hurrying. Why do you not pardon my disobedience... For now will I lie down in the dust. You will seek me diligently, but I will not be Job 7:21.
If God wants him, God had better be quick. That is spoken to the only person Job still believes is listening.
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