Go away! Go away! I long to be with you, but when I am with you, life is so miserable that I would really rather you went completely away! That's a sad conversation, but not unfamiliar between lovers. Angry words like these are sometimes heard between parents and teenagers.

If Job has been complaining to his friends in chapter 6, he now speaks directly to the God whom he loves, and yet whose presence has become unbearable to him. It is one of Job's many poignant speeches in the book.

Job 7:1-10 laments over the apparent pointlessness of Job's life, and the life of others in a similar predicament. It is like ″hard service″ (v. 1), which means something like slave labour (see 1 Kings 5:13-14). The nights seem to go on so long, month after month seems utterly futile, and a day dawns with a hint of hope but is soon gone, and it is back to night again (Job 7:2-6). Job feels he will never be happy again. Before long he will be dead, buried, and completely forgotten; his life will have counted for nothing. He will have left no mark on human affairs (vv. 7-10).

From verses 11 to 21, Job cries out to the God whom he loves and longs for. But it is such a paradox. His sufferings under the wrath of God are so deep that he actually voices the wish to be forsaken by Him (vv. 16, 19).

Like a girl challenging her boyfriend to go away, Job wishes God would leave him alone. He is full of ″anguish″ and ″bitterness of . . . soul″ (v. 11). God seems to think Job is ″the sea, or the monster of the deep″ (v. 12, that is, a hostile creature like Leviathan) and must be put under close guard. God won't leave him alone, even at night, but sends terrible nightmares (v. 14). ″Let me alone,″ cries Job (v. 16).

Verse 17 sounds like Psalm 8 with its question, ″What is man?″ But where Psalm 8 answers that men and women are entrusted with great honour by God, Job asks why God keeps such a hostile watch over him (Job 7:18-21). Why can't He just leave him alone?

Job 7 helps us understand the terrible burden of bearing the wrath of God. In his undeserved sufferings, Job foreshadows the later climactic sufferings of Jesus Christ as He bears the wrath of God against sinners. This is what it feels like. It is far worse than bankruptcy, than bereavement, than the loss of health; for it is the displeasure of God from whom alone we draw hope for life.