Are not my days few? Cease! Leave me alone, that I may take a little comfort Job 10:20
Job turns to God, and asks “why?” Why is the Creator destroying His own creation? How much better if he had never been born.
3 Does it seem good to You that You should oppress, That You should despise the work of Your hands, And smile on the counsel of the wicked?
Does it please God? (10:3) Ultimately Job’s problem is not with his friends. It is with God. He cannot understand what benefit God receives from oppressing him so.
Later, Job will understand as we must today. God brings even the most difficult experiences into the lives of believers not for His benefit, but for ours. When we are in the shadow of suffering we cannot see the good that will be revealed in us in the end (James 5:11).
Show me why You contend with me… why you despise the work of Your hands.
Are your days like the days of a mortal man? … That you should seek for my iniquity and search out my sin?
8 ‘Your hands have made me and fashioned me, An intricate unity; Yet You would destroy me. 9 Remember, I pray, that You have made me like clay. And will You turn me into dust again? 10 Did you not pour me out like milk, And curdle me like cheese, 11 Clothe me with skin and flesh, And knit me together with bones and sinews? 12 You have granted me life and favor, And Your care has preserved my spirit. 13 ‘And these things You have hidden in Your heart; I know that this was with You:
10:18-22 Job asks why he was ever born. Then he wishes the Lord would leave him alone to die. In contrast to 3:17-19, where the grave is described as a place of rest and freedom, the grave here is the land of darkness lacking any order. Job amplifies his wish that he should have gone straight from the womb to the tomb by linking the darkness of the grave with the dark day of his birth (3:3-9). Four different words for darkness in vv. 21, 22 stress the gloom and dreariness of the grave.
18 ‘Why then have You brought me out of the womb? Oh, that I had perished and no eye had seen me! 19 I would have been as though I had not been. I would have been carried from the womb to the grave. 20 Are not my days few? Cease! Leave me alone, that I may take a little comfort, 21 Before I go to the place from which I shall not return, To the land of darkness and the shadow of death, 22 A land as dark as darkness itself, As the shadow of death, without any order, Where even the light is like darkness.’ “
–> Job’s premise is that we are mere mortals. If we believe that — we live a little and then don’t exist any more, it’s true that it doesn’t make sense. Why does the Creator bother to deal with humans if He made them disposable? Perhaps that is the point God wants us to see. He did not create humans as mere mortals.
“Live today because tomorrow you die.” is a lie Satan wants us to believe.