ALL MY MEMBERS ARE AS A SHADOW

Job has reached the point where he no longer wants to hear what his three friends say; they are but ‘miserable comforters’, 16. 2. Already shunned by the community, he now feels more isolated than ever. Death is now imminent he feels, and perhaps the sooner the better, 17. 1, 11-16, even though he views it in terms of darkness, v. 13, and corruption, v. 14.

He compares the members of his body to a shadow, v. 7. This visual simile well conveys the state of his body, weak, malnour­ished, mere skin and bone, wasting away, probably from neglect. He is suffering from ‘sore boils’, all over his body, 2. 7. He is indeed a mere shadow of the man he was.

Psalm 102 may be compared, in particular verses 4 to 9, and verse 11, where we read, ‘My days are like a shadow that declineth and I am withered like grass’. So, Job laments, ‘My days are past, my purposes are broken off, even the thoughts of my heart’, 17. 11.

Job’s feelings and situation are brought before us: his spirit is consumed, 17. 1 RV; he is misunderstood, v. 4, mocked, v. 6, and miserable, v. 7. He has become a byword, v. 6, an object of reproach, ‘an open abhorring’, v. 6 RV, someone ‘to be spit on in the face’, v. 6 JND. He is full of sorrow and his sight is blurred through much weeping, v. 7; 16. 16.

Job’s sufferings in some aspects foreshadow those of the Lord Jesus. Both were severely tried and tested. There are echoes of this passage in Isaiah’s prophecies of the Servant, 49. 7; 53. 3, and in some of the Messianic psalms, for instance, Psalm 102, Psalm 69. 10-12, 20. The word ‘proverb’ in Psalm 69 verse 11, ‘I became a proverb to them’, and ‘byword’ in ‘a byword of the people’, Job 5. 6, are from the same Hebrew root, which sug­gests slander, contempt and mockery, someone being talked about disparagingly, as a warning and example.

In the New Testament, Job is commended as an example of those who are ‘happy which endure’, Jas. 5. 11. Here, Job reaffirms his continuing commitment to righteousness and godliness: he will ‘hold on his way’, v. 9, along with others of like mind. In this also we see Job as a type of the Saviour.