My Notes
What Does Job 7:15 Mean?
Job expresses suicidal ideation: his soul chooses strangling and death over his current life. The Hebrew (machanaqi — strangling, suffocation) and death (maveth) are preferred (bachar — chosen, selected, preferred) over his bones (atsamoth — his physical existence, his embodied life). Job's suffering has pushed him to the point where ending his life seems preferable to continuing it.
The word "chooseth" (bachar) is the same word used for God's choosing of Israel (Deuteronomy 7:6). The deliberateness is the point: this isn't a passing thought. Job has evaluated his options and selected death. The choosing is conscious, considered, and sustained.
The verse sits within Job's first major speech (chapters 6-7) and follows his curse of the day of his birth (chapter 3). The suicidal expression is escalating: from wishing he'd never been born (chapter 3) to actively preferring death now (7:15). The suffering that was unbearable is becoming unsurvivable.
Reflection Questions
- 1.What does the Bible preserving Job's suicidal ideation (without correction) teach about God's acceptance of honest despair?
- 2.How does the progression from chapter 3 (wishing he'd never been born) to chapter 7 (choosing death) show suffering's escalation?
- 3.What does it mean that 'chooseth' (deliberate selection) is the same word used for God choosing Israel?
- 4.If you or someone you know is in this place, how does Job's story provide both validation and eventual hope?
Devotional
Job would rather be strangled than keep breathing. The soul that once feared God and eschewed evil now chooses death over life. The man God called perfect has been pushed so far that ending it seems like the only remaining option.
The Bible preserves this. Without correction. Without a footnote saying "Job shouldn't have felt this way." The suicidal ideation of God's servant is recorded as sacred text — because the feeling is real, the suffering that produced it is real, and the God who preserves it isn't threatened by the honesty.
The word "chooseth" is what makes this verse so deliberately devastating. Not "considers." Not "is tempted by." Chooses. The same verb used for God choosing his people. Job has made a deliberate, considered selection: death. Strangling. Anything other than this body, this pain, this existence.
The progression from chapter 3 (wishing he'd never been born) to chapter 7 (choosing death now) shows suffering's escalation. The despair doesn't plateau. It deepens. What started as retrospective grief (I wish I didn't exist) has become active preference (I'd rather die right now). The trajectory is downward, and nobody in the narrative stops it or corrects it. The friends will argue theology. Nobody will address the suicidal expression directly.
If you or someone you love has reached Job's position — where death feels preferable to continued existence — the Bible says: this happens to the best people. God's own servant. The man heaven was proud of. The person who feared God and eschewed evil. He sat in ashes and chose strangling over breathing. Your darkness doesn't disqualify you from God's attention. Job's didn't.
The book that begins with God calling Job perfect includes a verse where Job wants to die. Both are true about the same person. Both are preserved in the same text. The perfection and the death-wish coexist in one servant of God.
Commentary
Trusted original commentary from respected historical Bible scholars and theologians.
So that my soul chooseth strangling,.... Not to strangle himself, as Ahithophel did, or to be strangled by others, this…
So that my soul - So that I; the soul being put for himself. Chooseth strangling - Dr. Good renders it “suffocation,”…
Job, observing perhaps that his friends, though they would not interrupt him in his discourse, yet began to grow weary,…
Consequence of the preceding, Job 7:7.
chooseth strangling A sense of choking is one of the accompaniments of the…