Bible Strands
Job 7:16
I loathe my life! I would not live forever. Leave me alone, for my days are but a breath.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Job speaks directly to God during his extended lament, positioned immediately after wishing for strangling (Job 7:15) and before questioning divine attention to humanity (Job 7:17).
The words — The verse hinges on מָ֭אַסְתִּי (Ma.'as.ti), literally "I reject" or "I loathe," paired with הֶ֥בֶל (He.vel), meaning "a breath," to frame the speaker's days as transient and unworthy of endurance.
The thread — This posture of life-weary despair appears in 1 Kings 19:4 when Elijah prays for death, and mirrors Job's own declarations in Job 10:1 and Job 9:21 where he explicitly loathes and despises his own life.
Why it lands — The text requires a reader to accept that raw, unvarnished despair over mortal brevity is a legitimate form of prayer, demanding honesty over spiritual performance.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
I loathe it; I would not live alway: let me alone; for my days are vanity.
Cross-references
- 1 Kings 19:4 while he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness. He sat down under a broom tree and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, LORD,” he said. “Take my life, for I am no better than my fathers.”
- Job 10:1 “I loathe my own life; I will express my complaint and speak in the bitterness of my soul.
- Job 9:21 Though I am blameless, I have no concern for myself; I despise my own life.
- Job 14:6 look away from him and let him rest, so he can enjoy his day as a hired hand.
- Job 6:9 that God would be willing to crush me, to unleash His hand and cut me off!
- Job 10:20 Are my days not few? Withdraw from me, that I may have a little comfort,
- Psalms 39:13 Turn Your gaze away from me, that I may again be cheered before I depart and am no more.”
- Psalms 62:9 Lowborn men are but a vapor; the exalted are but a lie. Weighed on the scale, they go up; together they are but a vapor.
- Jonah 4:8 As the sun was rising, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint and wished to die, saying, “It is better for me to die than to live.”
- Genesis 27:46 Then Rebekah said to Isaac, “I am weary of my life because of these Hittite women. If Jacob takes a Hittite wife from among them, what good is my life?”