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Job uses a metaphor that is similar to ones used elsewhere in scripture although given the likely age of the book of Job it is likely that Job says it first

Man who is born of a woman is few of days and full of trouble. He comes out like a flower and withers; he flees like a shadow and continues not.

He reminds us that man is short lived and frail. Then he takes up a similar theme to one he has taken up before. He questions God about why God is interested in man, why trouble over him?

And do you open your eyes on such a one and bring me into judgment with you? Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? There is not one. Since his days are determined, and the number of his months is with you, and you have appointed his limits that he cannot pass, look away from him and leave him alone, that he may enjoy, like a hired hand, his day.

Job oscillates between declaring trust and hope in God and complaining because he can’t fathom God’s dealings with mankind. In Eliphaz’s vision the spirit asks ‘who can be in the right before God? He charges the angels with error’. Eliphaz didn’t seem to comprehend the difficulty in applying that but Job does. Job knows he has lived as best he can with integrity yet he still knows he is not pure before God and he is asking if God is so cruel as to not give a way out. If man is condemned he asks, can’t God allow him even his fleeting pleasures before he dies?

He goes on to talk about how man has less permanence than the trees. A tree can live on even if it seems all but dead but when a man dies he is gone.