Why Bold Prayer Terrifies Us (Job 13:20–14:22)

20 “Only grant me two things, then I will not hide from your face:
21 withdraw your hand far from me, and do not let dread of you terrify me.
22 Then call, and I will answer; or let me speak, and you reply to me.
23 How many are my iniquities and my sins? Make me know my transgression and my sin.
24 Why do you hide your face and count me as your enemy?
25 Will you frighten a driven leaf and pursue dry chaff?
26 For you write bitter things against me and make me inherit the iniquities of my youth.
27 You put my feet in the stocks and watch all my paths; you set a limit for the soles of my feet.
28 He wastes away like a rotten thing, like a garment that is moth-eaten.

14:1 “A mortal, born of woman, few of days and full of trouble,
2 comes up like a flower and withers, flees like a shadow and does not last.
3 Do you even fix your gaze upon such a one? Do you bring me into judgment with you?
4 Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? No one!
5 Since his days are determined, the number of his months is known to you, and you have appointed bounds that he cannot pass,
6 look away from him that he may rest, until, like a hired worker, he finishes his day.
7 “For there is hope for a tree, if it is cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its shoots will not cease.
8 Though its root grows old in the earth, and its stump dies in the ground,
9 yet at the scent of water it will bud and put forth branches like a young plant.
10 But a mortal dies and is powerless; humans expire, and where are they?
11 As waters fail from a lake, and a river wastes away and dries up,
12 so mortals lie down and do not rise again; until the heavens are no more they will not awake or be roused out of their sleep.
13 Oh that you would hide me in Sheol, that you would conceal me until your wrath is past, that you would appoint me a set time, and remember me!
14 If mortals die, will they live again? All the days of my service I would wait until my release should come.
15 You would call, and I would answer you; you would long for the work of your hands.
16 For then you would not number my steps; you would not keep watch over my sin;
17 my transgression would be sealed up in a bag, and you would cover over my iniquity.
18 “But the mountain falls and crumbles away, and the rock is removed from its place;
19 the waters wear away the stones; downpours wash away the soil of the earth; so you destroy the hope of mortals.
20 You prevail forever against them, and they pass away; you change their countenance, and send them away.
21 Their children come to honor, and they do not know it; they are brought low, and it does not perceive it.
22 They feel only the pain of their own bodies, and they mourn only for themselves.”
(Revised English Bible)

Background

Job has lost everything—wealth, children, health—yet his three friends insist his suffering must be punishment for secret sin. By chapter 13, Job has had enough of their pious platitudes. He demands a direct audience with God Himself, bypassing human mediators. What follows in 13:20–14:22 is one of the rawest, most audacious prayers in Scripture: Job begs God to stop crushing him long enough for an honest conversation, then launches into a searing meditation on the brevity and apparent hopelessness of human life. Remarkably, God never rebukes Job for the tone. Instead, later in the book, God says Job has “spoken of me what is right” (42:7). This passage proves that bold, even accusatory prayer is not always rebellion; sometimes it is the only honest response to unbearable pain.