Job14chapter 14

Job 14:1-2

Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble is a phrase this book alone uses in the Old Testament, recurring at 15:14 in Eliphaz's mouth and 25:4 in Bildad's, both friends turning Job's own confession of frailty into an argument for man's uncleanness. He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down pictures a life measured in a single day's bloom, and Henry reads the shadow that follows as the same brevity doubled, a thing already fleeting compared to something with no substance at all. The verse opens Job's meditation on mortality in general terms, before he turns the same complaint toward God directly.

Job 14:3-4

Job turns from man's brevity to ask why God spends his attention on so small and short a life, bringest me into judgment with thee treating the courtroom language of chapter 13 as still open. Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean, not one, states man's inherited condition as a plain fact rather than an argument, and Gill and Clarke both read it of a corruption passed to every child of woman from the first man. Job's question is not whether the verdict is deserved but why a creature already unclean by birth should be measured by a clean standard at all.

Job 14:5-6

Seeing his days are determined, the number of his months are with thee states the same providence the whirlwind speeches will later expound at length, a fixed bound Job cannot pass by any effort of his own. Turn from him, that he may rest asks God to grant a hireling's mercy, the workman's right to some ease before the day's wage is paid, Barnes noting the image of a laborer who has earned at least a pause. The request is modest measured against the friends' demands, not release from the bargain of mortality, only rest within it.

Job 14:7-9

There is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again opens the chapter's central contrast, a felled tree that can bud again through the scent of water alone, its root not entirely dead though the stock die in the ground. Gill reads the extremity of the picture, root grown old and stock dead, as deliberate, so that the tree's revival is made the more remarkable before man's case is set beside it in the verses that follow. The tender branch thereof will not cease names a persistence in a plant this chapter is about to deny to a man.

Job 14:10-12

But man dieth, and wasteth away answers the tree directly, and where is he presses a question the plant never faces, since no scent of water calls a dead man back. So man lieth down, and riseth not draws the comparison a step further than sleep, till the heavens be no more setting the limit not at a season but at the end of the created order itself. Clarke notes that Job is not yet denying any resurrection outright, only denying that ordinary providence, the providence that revives a tree, extends the same courtesy to man.

Job 14:13-15

Job's wish rises through three steps, hidden in the grave until wrath is past, appointed a set time, and remembered, each request assuming the grave is not the last word. If a man die, shall he live again states the book's central unanswered question in Job's own mouth, and the older writers from Gregory onward hear here the first light of a hope that 19:25 will carry further. All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come turns the question into a resolve, and thou shalt call, and I will answer thee answers his own courtroom demand from 13:22 with a hope rather than a dread, God's call now something Job wants rather than fears.

Job 14:16-17

For now thou numberest my steps returns the argument to complaint from the hope just voiced, God's minute attention now read as prosecution again rather than care. My transgression is sealed up in a bag, and thou sewest up mine iniquity pictures evidence kept under seal for a future trial, Gill noting the figure of a merchant's sealed bag of silver, its contents unchanged until the day it is opened and counted. The verse shows the chapter's whole movement in miniature, a hope voiced and a dread returning within the space of two verses.

Job 14:18-19

The mountain falling and the rock removed out of his place widen the scale from a man's life to the most permanent things in nature, so that even what looks unmovable to human eyes wears away under the same hand. The waters wear the stones states the process as slow rather than sudden, water on stone rather than a single blow, and Delitzsch reads it as Job's answer to his own hope in verse 7, since even stone lacks the tree's power to bud again. Thou destroyest the hope of man closes the comparison bluntly, man's hope named as more fragile than a mountain's rock.

Job 14:20-22

Thou prevailest for ever against him, and he passeth states defeat as final and total, thou changest his countenance, and sendest him away describing death as a dismissal from the world's presence. His sons come to honour, and he knoweth it not extends the loss past death itself, the dead man in Job's picture having no more awareness of his household's fortune than of his own affliction, a state Henry contrasts with the fuller hope voiced only verses earlier. The chapter that opened with a man of few days and full of trouble closes with the same trouble following him past the grave, his flesh in pain and his soul in mourning, and the meditation ends without resolving its own question.