Job7chapter 7

Job compares his life to two working men everyone knew. The first is the conscript or forced labourer, serving a fixed term he cannot shorten. The second is the hired day-labourer, who works in the sun watching the shadows and is paid only at sundown — which is why the Law later insisted his wage be handed over the same day. Both men live for the end of the shift, and Job says his shift never ends.

The weaver's shuttle is the other trade image: thrown back and forth across the loom faster than the eye follows, and then the thread runs out. Ancient looms were upright, worked standing, and everyone had watched one.

The physical description is unsparing and specific — flesh clothed with worms and crusts of dirt, skin breaking open and running, nights of tossing until dawn, and the fear of sleep itself because of the dreams. This is the sickness of chapter 2 seen from inside.

The last section takes a line of Psalm 8 and turns it inside out. 'What is man, that thou shouldest magnify him?' — but where the psalm marvels that God pays attention to so small a creature, Job asks to be left alone. He calls himself a 'watcher of men' target, asks why God will not look away long enough for him to swallow his spit, and wonders whether he is the sea or a sea-monster that has to be kept under guard.