14
📚“Man who is born of woman is of few days, and full of trouble. 2 📚He comes forth like a flower, and is cut down. And he flees like a shadow, and does not stay. 3 📚And do you open your eyes at such a one, and bring me into judgment with yourself?14:1-3 Job wonders why God bothers with a creature so frail and insignificant as man.⚜
4 📚Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? No one.
5 📚Since his days are determined, the number of his months being with you, you have set limits that he cannot pass. 6 📚Turn away from him, so that he may rest, until he has finished his day, like a hired man.
14:5-6 Since man’s life is vain and empty, Job reasons, why doesn’t God leave him alone to live it the best he can without afflictions and disasters coming on him?⚜
7 📚“For there is hope for a tree, if it is cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its tender shoots will not cease. 8 📚Even though its root becomes old in the earth, and its stump dies in the ground, 9 📚yet at the scent of water it will bud, and bring forth branches like a plant.
10 📚But man dies, and is laid away; yes, man breathes his last, and where is he?
11 📚As water disappears from the sea, and a stream becomes parched and dried up,
12 📚So man lies down, and does not rise. They will not awake, or be roused out of their sleep, until the heavens are no more.
14:7-12 Neither Job nor his friends nor anyone else in the Bible believed in the idea of reincarnation. Note at Job 11:12. Also at that time, as far as we know, God had not yet revealed the doctrine of the resurrection of man’s body. Job thought that death was a sleep in a dark place from which there is no awakening. He had no word from God to enable him to believe otherwise.⚜
13 📚Oh, that you would hide me in the grave 📖! That you would conceal me until your wrath is past! That you would appoint a set time for me, and remember me!
14 📚If a man dies, will he live again? All the days of my appointed time I will wait, until my change comes.
15 📚You will call, and I will answer you. You will long for the work of your hands.
14:13-15 As Job considers what he thinks is man’s sad fate, it seems a thought begins to form in his mind, a faint hope stirs in his heart – what if man should rise again? What if there is life after death where the innocent are vindicated, all questions answered, all problems solved? How good it would be! How much more easily he could bear the pains and sorrows of this life! The question Job asks in v 14 is answered by the Lord Jesus Christ in the New Testament. Man will live again after he has died. The Lord Jesus rose from the dead and the time is coming when all men shall rise (Matt 16:21; 28:1-7; John 5:28-29; 11:25; 1 Cor 15:20-26; 1 Thess 4:13-18). But Job did not have this blessed truth to cheer him.⚜
16 📚For now you will count my steps. Will you watch over my sin?
17 📚My transgression is sealed up in a bag, and you cover my iniquity.
18 📚But surely the falling mountain crumbles away, and the rock is moved from its place;
19 📚Water wears away the stones, and torrents wash away the soil of the earth; so you destroy the hope of man.
20 📚You overpower him permanently, and he passes on; you change his countenance, and send him away. 21 📚His sons come to honour, and he does not know it; and they are brought low, but he does not perceive it.
22 📚But his body will be in pain, and his soul will mourn for himself”.
14:16-22 Job’s thoughts of resurrection and the hope it stirred pass away for the moment. They are crushed beneath the weight of his painful circumstances and dark depression. But, it seems, the idea continues to work deep in his mind and comes out later with more force and assurance (Job 19:25-27). Notice in vs 16,17 that Job admits there has been sin in his life. He does not deny it. He only denies that he has been guilty of such sin as to merit his awful calamities.⚜