Job 7:1

Fourth long strophe JOB BEWAILS THE VANITY OF LIFE, Job 7:1-11.

a. Eliphaz had drawn a glowing picture of justice and mercy as blended together in the divine ordering of human life. On the contrary, Job shows life to be a mingled scene of vanity and misery, Job 6:1-6. “Job’s inflamed eye throws up against the sky, in gigantic outline, an omnipotent slave driver, who fills the earth with miserable wretches overworked by day and shaken by feverish weariness and dreams of torture by night.” Davidson.

1. An appointed time צבא , (Job 14:14; Isaiah 40:2,) a warfare. The word is properly used of military service, and is rendered by the Septuagint πειρατηριον , “a state of trial.” Life means service the hard service of a soldier. “Life,” says Zoroaster, “is the post of man. It is forbidden to quit a post without the permission of the commander.” ( Maxims.) “The fact that Job, in Job 7:1, brings his suffering into connexion with the misery of the whole race, indicates progress in relation to chapter iii, where, predominantly at least, he limited himself to the representation of his individual condition. By this advance, the question concerning God’s righteousness and love receives a much more forcible significance. The question is no longer about a solitary exception, which may have a secret personal reason for its existence. Job now stands forth as representative of the whole of suffering, oppressed humanity, arraigning God because of his injustice.” Hengstenberg.