Job 7:1

The connexion is with the preceding verses ch. Job 6:28-30, which express the thought of Job's innocence, and the thought that in spite of his innocence he is miserably plagued. Under this feeling he throws his eye over all mankind, and sees them also doomed by an inexorable destiny to a life that is brief and filled with pain.

an appointed time Or, a time of service. The reference is to the hard service of the soldier, in which there are two elements, the fixed period and the hard toil of the campaign. Both are laid on man by a power to which he is subject; cf. Isaiah 40:2; Job 14:14.

days of a hireling The "hireling" might be the mercenary soldier, whose fate, far from home and at the disposal of an alien power, might be thought harder even than that of the ordinary soldier. The word is used in this sense, Jeremiah 46:21, and the verb, 2 Samuel 10:6. In Job 7:2, however, the word has its ordinary sense of a hired labourer, and this is probably its meaning here.