“So am I made to possess months of vanity, and wearisome nights are appointed to me.”
Job laments that he is allotted months of emptiness and that nights of misery have been appointed to him, suggesting that his suffering is not temporary but constitutes the entire substance of his existence. The verb 'appointed' suggests that his misery is cosmically ordained rather than accidental. The emptiness and misery fill his entire temporal experience.
Church Fathers on Job 7:3
As a servant earnestly desireth the shadow, and as an hireling looketh for the end of his work, so am I made to possess months of vanity, and I have numbered me wearisome nights. Since for ‘a servant to desire the shadow,’ is after the heat of trial and the sweat of labour to seek the cool of eternal repose. Which shadow that servant desired, who said, My soul thirsteth for God, the living God; when shall I come and appear before God? And again, Woe is me that I sojourn in…
Nicene & Post-Nicene / Ante-Nicene Fathers translations · public domain
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