Introduction: A New Argument from Iyov
In Chapter 10, Iyov opens with an entirely new argument. Until now, he struggled with questions of Divine providence and suffering, but here he touches upon the most fundamental question: if the Holy One, blessed be He, knows in advance everything that is destined to occur - where is man's free will? And if free choice was stripped from him by the very nature of the Creator's foreknowledge, what can be demanded of him, and for what is he being punished? The entire chapter is built around this argument, which is Iyov's famous and well-known challenge. We will not delve into the answers here - we will discuss later what can be answered in response to this question - but rather focus on clarifying Iyov's own words.
"I Will Give Free Rein to My Complaint" - Speaking from Bitterness
נָקְטָה נַפְשִׁי בְּחַיָּי אֶעֶזְבָה עָלַי שִׂיחִי אֲדַבְּרָה בְּמַר נַפְשִׁי׃ - My soul loathes my life; I will give free rein to my complaint; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.
Iyov says: My soul is quarreling with my life. Life, as it were, wants to live, but the soul already despises it, to the point that life has become like an enemy to my soul. Therefore - "I will give free rein to my complaint": I had thought not to speak, I had thought to put a muzzle on my mouth, but I am abandoning that thought; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul and say everything I have to say.
"Do Not Condemn Me" - The Creator's Foreknowledge and Free Will
אֹמַר אֶל־אֱלוֹהַּ אַל־תַּרְשִׁיעֵנִי הוֹדִיעֵנִי עַל מַה־תְּרִיבֵנִי׃ - I will say to God: Do not condemn me; let me know why You contend with me.
Here Iyov opens his new argument. The Holy One, blessed be He, is ultimate perfection, and from this absolute perfection it is impossible that He would not know everything that occurs in the world and everything destined to occur in it. One cannot, Heaven forbid, attribute foolishness or a lack of wisdom to Him, nor can one attribute a change in knowledge - as though something could suddenly be new to Him and He would say, as it were, "I did not know this." For if He does not know something, that would be a flaw in perfection, and His perfection is absolute. If so, He knew everything from the outset, including whether I would be righteous or wicked, whether a person would sin or not sin.
From this, Iyov argues: If so, where is free will? The very fact that the Holy One, blessed be He, knows what I am destined to do compels me to do what He knows. To give a specific example: if Hashem knows that a certain person will desecrate the upcoming Shabbat - is it possible for him not to desecrate it? And if it is impossible for him not to desecrate it, what claim can be made against him for the desecration? For free choice was taken away from him, and what took it away was the Creator's foreknowledge.
Therefore, Iyov says: "Do not condemn me" - do not cause me to be wicked. Your knowledge is what made me wicked; You, as it were, compel me to be wicked. And even if the suffering comes because I am wicked, my claim against You, Creator of the world, is: why did You know that I would be wicked? For if I had the choice not to be wicked, it would turn out that You knew something that did not ultimately come to pass - You knew that I would be wicked, yet in the end I became righteous - and that is impossible. If so, You condemned me; You compelled me to sin. For this reason, I add and plead: "Let me know why You contend with me" - why do You come to quarrel with me, why do You punish me, why is there wrath against me? After all, no accusations can be brought against me, since Your foreknowledge compelled me to sin.
"Is It Good for You to Oppress?" - Three Explanations for the Suffering of the Righteous
הֲטוֹב לְךָ כִּי־תַעֲשֹׁק כִּי־תִמְאַס יְגִיעַ כַּפֶּיךָ וְעַל־עֲצַת רְשָׁעִים הוֹפָעְתָּ׃ - Is it good for You to oppress, to despise the toil of Your hands, while You shine upon the counsel of the wicked?
Iyov says: Regarding what we see, that the righteous suffer, one could propose one of three possibilities. The first possibility - that it is beyond the power of the Holy One, blessed be He, to exercise providence; He lacks the capacity to see what happens with each and every individual, and therefore cannot ensure that the tzaddik will not suffer. This possibility Iyov rejects out of hand, for it is inconceivable to say that Hashem is limited. The One who created the world can certainly supervise it - divine providence is a minor matter compared to the creation of the world. For the One who created man with all his complexity, what is it for Him to watch over man? If so, this is not a lack of ability, but rather that He does not desire to exercise providence.
And why would He not wish to exercise providence? One possibility: out of what we might define as oppression and malice. Like a person who witnesses injustice and does not intervene due to the wickedness of his heart - he sees someone oppressing his fellow, stealing from him, and remains indifferent. But such a thing is inconceivable, that the Holy One, blessed be He, should possess, Heaven forbid, an evil trait, an element of jealousy or a desire to do harm. This is why he says: "Is it good for You that You should oppress?" - could such a thing be imagined?
A second possibility: not because He does not care about the suffering of human beings out of cruelty, but because human beings are lowly in His eyes and He does not occupy Himself with them at all. Like a person who is not troubled by what happens to an ant under the table, how much it suffers and what befalls it - it is insignificant in our eyes and we pay no attention to it. Regarding this Iyov says: "that You should despise the toil of Your hands" - after all, You created man, and he is the work of Your hands, what You fashioned and made, so how could You despise him and say, as it were, that what happens to him is of no interest to You? So here is one difficulty: how is it possible that Hashem would cause harm out of malice? There is no evil in Him, hence "Is it good for You that You should oppress?" And even if we say that it is not out of malice but out of indifference toward human beings and their lowliness - how could He possibly despise the work of His hands?
There remains the third possibility: that the Holy One, blessed be He, truly exercises providence over the righteous, and the suffering He brings upon them is because the tzaddik sinned and Hashem exacts retribution and executes judgment upon him. To this Iyov comes and argues - how can the tzaddik be punished for this, when You are punishing him for something for which he is not at fault? And why is he not at fault? Because Iyov already explained earlier that sins are determined by Hashem: the Creator's foreknowledge necessitates man's actions, and if Hashem knew that I would do it, I am compelled to do it. This is why he says: "and shine upon the counsel of the wicked" - You shone forth, You decreed that he would act wickedly, Your foreknowledge made him wicked, and if so, for what is he being punished?
Midrash: Three Partners in Man
There is a Midrash on the verse, "Is it good for You that You should oppress, that You should despise the toil of Your hands?" There are three partners in man: his father, his mother, and the Holy One, blessed be He. The body is from his father and mother, and the soul is from the Holy One, blessed be He. Certainly everything is from Him, blessed be He, but physically the body comes from the father and mother, and when the Holy One, blessed be He, comes to dissolve the partnership, He takes what is His and says to the father and mother: Here is yours before you. Iyov says: You said to the Satan, "Behold, he is in your hand; only spare his soul" - so it turns out that the share of my father and mother You delivered into the hand of the Satan, while Your own share You guarded. This is nothing short of injustice. Hear the claim Iyov brings before the Holy One, blessed be He: Your share - the soul - You guarded meticulously, saying to the Satan, "only spare his soul"; but the share of father and mother - the body - You crushed. Is it good for You that You should oppress?
Do You Have Eyes of Flesh? - No New Information in Non-Sensory Knowledge
הַעֵינֵי בָשָׂר לָךְ אִם־כִּרְאוֹת אֱנוֹשׁ תִּרְאֶה׃ - Do You have eyes of flesh, or do You see as man sees?
Now Iyov comes to prove with evidence that one cannot claim that even though Hashem knows all the future, man still retains free will without contradiction. One cannot say that Hashem knows in advance that Reuven will act wickedly, and yet Reuven retains free will so that we can say he became wicked on his own and not by force of the Creator's foreknowledge. And why can one not say this? Because there is a vast difference between His knowledge and our knowledge.
First proof: Things that are novel and change are matters perceived through the senses. But the perception of the Holy One, blessed be He, is not through senses; it is a spiritual perception. Therefore, it is impossible for anything new to occur such that He would say, as it were, "Now I know." Change stems from the senses: if I do not know who is in the adjacent room, it is because I do not see and do not hear, and my senses are limited; and when I go into the adjacent room, new knowledge is acquired that I did not have previously. But spiritual knowledge does not require walking there to know. Only regarding one whose knowledge is sensory can you say that something not perceived by the senses at first was perceived by them at the end. In spiritual knowledge - whatever is known from the beginning is known through to the end, for spirituality is not bounded.
It is told of the Brisker Rav that he once sent his son to see whether a certain item was in the kitchen. A Chassid who was present said, "With my Rebbe, there is no need to send someone to see what is in the kitchen; he knows through Ruach HaKodesh what is in the kitchen." The Brisker Rav replied to him, "With us in Brisk, we use Ruach HaKodesh to understand what Tosafos meant, not to know what is in the kitchen." A sharp reply.
At any rate, one whose knowledge is sensory - his knowledge is limited, and consequently something is suddenly revealed to him as new: now I have seen, now I have heard. But the Holy One, blessed be He, His knowledge is spiritual, and therefore He knows everything in advance. This is why he says: "Do You have eyes of flesh?"
A second proof: acquiring newly emerging knowledge causes a change within the knower himself. If yesterday I did not know a tractate and today I studied it and now know it, something in me has changed, a transformation took place within me; there was something I did not know, and now I know it. But in a complete, perfect entity, there is no change whatsoever. The Holy One, blessed be He, lacks nothing, and if He lacks nothing, He is completely perfect; and if He is perfect, there is no change in Him; and if there is no change in Him, it is impossible for new knowledge to arise within Him. For the arising of new knowledge means: "I have now come to know what I did not know before," and a change occurred in me. What He knew yesterday is what He knows today and what He will know in the future, and this never changes. For if it were to change, it would turn out that yesterday He was lacking, not possessing this piece of knowledge, and today, as it were, He became perfected, studied, and acquired additional knowledge. Could one possibly say such a thing about the Creator of the world? Therefore Iyov says: "Or do You see as man sees?" - do You perceive things like a human being who grasps them through his senses and intellect? Surely not! Rather, everything is known to Him in advance, for it is impossible that anything could ever be added to His knowledge.
Are Your Days as the Days of Man? - The Creator is Above Time
הֲכִימֵי אֱנוֹשׁ יָמֶיךָ אִם־שְׁנוֹתֶיךָ כִּימֵי גָבֶר׃ - "Are Your days as the days of man, or Your years as the days of a mortal?"
Iyov presents a third proof: one cannot say of the Holy One, blessed be He, that His knowledge is limited or that anything becomes newly known to Him, because novelty arises solely from the dimension of time. Were it not for time, nothing new would ever emerge in the world. If time stands still, there is no novelty, no movement, nothing at all; like a film where the frame is frozen, everything freezes in place and nothing undergoes change. The moment a change occurs, something happens, and motion begins - that is the very definition of time.
But the Holy One, blessed be He, is not under the domain of time; He is above it. Consequently, it is impossible for any change to affect Him. This is why Iyov says: "Are Your days as the days of man, or Your years as the days of a mortal?" - Are You too, Master of the Universe, subject to time like a human being? "Do You have eyes of flesh?", "Are Your days as the days of man?" - could such an idea even be conceived? For changes stem from time: at ten o'clock I knew one thing, and at two minutes past ten I learned something else. But One who is always at ten o'clock, for whom time never shifts - there is no new knowledge with Him and no change, so how could it ever be said that something "became known" to Him?
A Parable for Illustration: Viewing the Entire Spectrum
To illustrate this - and this is a very crude analogy, meant only to bring the concept closer to the intellect - let us imagine a person standing high above, viewing an entire spectrum, from Avraham Avinu down to our generation, with all the generations spread out before him. Is such a person inside time, or above it? Above it, because he sees everything at once. And when he looks at Avraham Avinu, does he see him yesterday or today? For him, there is no "today" and "yesterday"; there is no time at all. Thus, he sees Avraham, and in that very same moment he also sees a person living in our day, since he is above time. There is no "this happened then and that happened today" for him - everything is, as it were, simultaneous.
If so, could one say that anything becomes newly known to him? Surely he cannot say: "Now I am looking at Avraham Avinu, and I have discovered something new about the era of David HaMelech" - for just as he sees Avraham right now, so too he sees David HaMelech, sees what happens with him, sees his end, sees everything, because he is above and the entire spectrum lies before his eyes. This is not a matter of prophecy: prophecy operates within the domain of time - I am situated here and know what will happen in the future, as when Avraham Avinu knew what would happen two thousand years later. But one who is above time sees Avraham and David HaMelech simultaneously, and one cannot say of him, "I learned something new" - what could be new, when everything is open, foreseen, and standing before his eyes? This is what Iyov means by: "Are Your days as the days of man, or Your years as the days of a mortal?" - man is under the dominion of time, whereas the Holy One, blessed be He, is above the dominion of time, and therefore new knowledge can never arise within Him.
In Summary:
Iyov opens the chapter with bitterness of soul and resolves to speak all that is on his heart. His new argument is the problem of divine foreknowledge and free will: since Hashem is perfect and knows all of the future in advance, in his view His foreknowledge must predetermine man's actions; if so, "do not condemn me" and "let me know why You contend with me." From there he moves to the three possible explanations for the suffering of the righteous - lack of ability, an unwillingness born of malice, or an unwillingness stemming from the lowliness of created beings, and finally punishment for sin - and refutes them all: "Is it good for You that You should oppress, that You should despise the work of Your hands, while shining upon the counsel of the wicked?", and in the words of the Midrash: You surrendered the share of my father and mother into the hands of the Satan, while preserving Your share. And in the verses "Do You have eyes of flesh?" and "Are Your days as the days of man?", he presents three proofs that His knowledge cannot be compared to ours: His knowledge is spiritual rather than sensory, there is no change in Him because He is perfect, and He is not subject to the dominion of time - therefore, everything is known before Him in advance, and no knowledge can ever be newly acquired by Him.