Job 10:18

JOB'S APPEAL FOR GOD TO ALLOW HIM TO DIE

"Wherefore then hast thou brought me forth out of the womb?

I had given up the ghost, and no eye had seen me.

I should have been as though I had not been;

I should have been carried from the womb to the grave.

Are not my days few? cease then,

And let me alone that I may take comfort a little,

Before I go whence I shall not return,

Even to the land of darkness and the shadow of death;

The land dark as midnight,

The land of the shadow of death without any order,

And where the light is as midnight."

"The Land of ... the shadow of death" (Job 10:21). Here again we have an expression picked up and used in the Psalms (Psalms 23).

Some scholars understand Job's remarks here as coming very close to the category of blasphemy. For example, Franks wrote that, "He accuses God of having created him only to torment him ... that he sees faults where they do not exist ... torturing him to make him confess ... having blessed and preserved him, while all the while secretly planning to torture him."[1] We reject such comments. One may find many other similar comments in the writings of scholars regarding this chapter; but as we have noted above, there are marvelous evidences of faith and submission to God's will throughout the whole passage.