Job 14:3 Commentary and Bible Study

Job’s complaint is this: why should God focus so much attention on one who is so impermanent, so doomed, so much on the edge of being obliterated? Why concentrate so much power on destroying something that is already on the brink of destruction? Supposing God to be angry with human sin and to have no gracious intentions towards him, Job can see no purpose in this even from God’s perspective. Why waste time in doing what is going to happen anyway? The matter is so perplexing to Job that he can make no sense of it at all. When he speaks of God opening his eyes upon him, he means that God uses his infinite powers to scrutinise his servant, and uses it to hurt his creature. But Scripture so often portrays the eyes of God in an altogether different light. The eyes of God are often seen as looking upon the righteous for their good in circumstances of hardship; they are the eyes of a loving heavenly Father. Job has lost sight of God’s tenderness and to him eyes of God represent an unwelcome scrutiny of his shortcomings and nothing more. This was the state of mind of Luther before he understood the true meaning of the phrase, ‘the righteousness of God’. Job had lost sight of grace, and could only see God as a judge and not as a Saviour, even though he had already trusted in God.