Job 6:8-13

The Voice

⁸    If only my one request were answered,
        if only God would grant me the fulfillment of my only hope:
⁹    That God would be willing to crush me, to kill me,
        that God would release His hand and cut me off.
¹⁰    At least then I would have a crumb of consolation,
        one source of joy in the midst of this relentless agony:
    I never denied the words of the Holy One in my pain.

It is possible to imagine God’s creation as fabric on a loom and God as a weaver. The threads of the world are stretched out vertically on a large loom, creating the warp of the fabric; and God weaves the threads of our lives horizontally, pushing them back and forth quickly around the vertical threads with His shuttle, creating the weft of the fabric. Job pictures his life ending when the thread runs out (7:6), but here he asks God to release His guidance on Job’s life and cut him away from this world prematurely. To do so, God would cut across the warp, thus affecting all of creation and not just Job himself. Even though God does not grant Job’s wish, Job has no thought of suicide; he knows only God has the right to begin and end life.

¹¹Job: What strength do I have, that I should persist in this life?
        And what is my life’s end, that I should forestall it?
¹²    Is my strength like that of stones?
        Is my flesh like bronze?
¹³    Can I even hope to help myself,
        or has any chance of help been driven away?