When Darkness Becomes a Prayer (Job 10:2–22)

Sometimes the most honest prayers are the ones we’re afraid to pray out loud—the raw, trembling questions that rise from the depths when life feels unbearably heavy. Job dares to voice them, and in doing so he teaches us that God is big enough to hold even our darkest cries.

“I shall say to God, ‘Do not condemn me; let me know why you contend against me. Does it seem good to you to oppress, to despise the work of your hands and favour the designs of the wicked? Have you eyes of flesh? Do you see as a mortal sees? Are your days as the days of a mortal, or your years as a human lifespan, that you must seek out my iniquity and search after my sin, although you know that I am not guilty, and there is none to deliver out of your hand? Your hands fashioned and made me, and now you turn and destroy me. Remember that you have shaped me like clay; and will you turn me back to dust again? Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese? You clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews. You granted me life and steadfast love, and your care has preserved my spirit. Yet these things you hid in your heart; I know that this was your purpose. If I sin, you watch me and do not acquit me of my iniquity. If I am guilty, woe to me! If I am innocent, I cannot lift up my head, for I am filled with disgrace and look on my affliction. Should I lift myself up, you hunt me like a lion, and again display your power against me. You renew your witnesses against me and increase your vexation towards me; fresh hosts and new wars come against me. Why did you bring me out from the womb? Would that I had died before any eye had seen me and were as though I had not been, carried from the womb to the grave. Are not my days few? Let me alone, that I may find a little cheer before I go—and I shall not return—to the land of darkness and deep gloom, the land of gloom and chaos, where even the light is like darkness.’” (Job 10:2–22, REB)

Background

Job 10 forms the heart of Job’s second major speech (chapters 9–10). After Bildad’s “tidy” theology of retribution, Job refuses to be silenced. This passage is one sustained, anguished prayer—technically a lament addressed directly to God, beginning with the bold imperative “I shall say to God” (v. 2). Structurally it falls into three movements:

1. A courtroom plea for explanation (vv. 2–7)
2. A remembrance of God’s intimate creative care (vv. 8–12)
3. A despairing accusation that God has hidden destructive intent from the beginning (vv. 13–17), ending in a wish that he had never been born (vv. 18–22).