Job again takes up his complaint, but in a quieter tone, so that he is able to imagine after all a way in which he might maintain his cause before God. He complains first of the shortness of his life. His time runs swiftly as a runner, as the light papyrus boats used on the Nile, as an eagle in its flight (Job 9:25 f.). If he should resolve to brighten up and treat his misery as a bad dream, what use? God will again put him on the rack. (We may associate Job's quieter moods with temporary relief from paroxysms of pain, which he knows full well, however, to be only temporary). All purifications are useless (Job 9:30 f.). God and he cannot come together on equal terms. If only there were an umpire between them, who could lay his hand upon both disputants, and enforce his decision upon them (Job 9:33). Or if God would cease smiting him with pain, and lay aside His terrifying majesty (Job 9:34). Then Job would speak without fear (Job 9:35).
We may view the cry for a daysman, for God with His majesty laid aside, as an instinctive prophecy of the Incarnation, though the poet has no such thing in his mind. Cf. David in Browning's Saul:
-' Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for, my flesh that I seek
In the Godhead.
Duhm finely points out the psychological truth, that he only can believe God to be his enemy, who seeks Him as his friend. Job's invectives, he further says, are very like those of a modern pessimist: yet they impress us very differently, because they spring from a heart that needs God.
Job 9:30. In both cases mg. is better than text. Lye is potash, used for cleansing purposes.