Job · chapter 14 of 42
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In Job 14 Job reflects on human life: brief, full of trouble and passing like a flower and a shadow. He compares man to a cut-down tree that may sprout again, and asks whether a person, once dead, will live again. He longs for God to hide him in Sheol until his wrath passes, but ends with the sense that hope wears away and pain remains.
This chapter closes the first cycle of speeches and is one of the deepest in the book. Job stops arguing with the friends and meditates aloud, speaking to God, on the human condition. He raises one of the great questions of the Bible: if a person dies, will he live again? The Old Testament only glimpses the answer, which the New Testament reveals in the resurrection of Christ.
Job begins with a meditation on human life: man who is born of woman is few of days and full of trouble. He comes out like a flower and withers, flees like a shadow and does not last. He wonders whether God opens his eyes on such a one and brings him into judgment. No one can bring a clean thing out of an unclean. His days and months are numbered by God, within bounds he cannot pass. Job asks God to look away and let him rest, like a hired worker, until his day is done.
Then he contrasts man with a tree. There is hope for a tree: if it is cut down, it will sprout again; though its root grows old in the earth and its stump dies in the soil, at the scent of water it will bud and put out branches like a young plant. But a man dies and is laid low; he breathes his last, and where is he? As waters fail from a lake and a river wastes away and dries up, so a man lies down and does not rise; until the heavens are no more he will not awake or be roused from his sleep.
Then Job voices a longing: oh that God would hide him in Sheol and conceal him until his wrath is past, and set a time to remember him. He asks whether a man, if he dies, shall live again; all the days of his service he would wait until his renewal came. Then God would call and he would answer, and God would long for the work of his hands. Now God counts his steps, but then he would not keep watch over his sin; his transgression would be sealed up in a bag and God would cover over his iniquity.
But the chapter ends in discouragement: mountains crumble, water wears away stones and floods wash away the soil, and so God destroys the hope of man. He prevails forever against him, and the man passes away. His sons come to honor and he does not know it. He feels only the pain of his own body.
References follow ESV book names and verse numbers. Read each verse in your Bible before the explanation.
A person born of woman lives few days, full of trouble; he comes out like a flower and withers, flees like a shadow and does not last. Job describes human frailty with images that have accompanied many generations of believers.
Job observes that if a tree is cut down there is hope that it will sprout again. The contrast with man, who dies without sprouting, shows the weight of his question: will there be life after death?
Job asks whether a person, once dead, will live again, and says he would wait all the days of his service until his renewal comes. He does not affirm the resurrection, but the question opens the door to the hope that Christ would confirm.
Job imagines that God would call and he would answer, and that God would long for the work of his hands. It is an image of future reconciliation: the Creator who now seems distant would again desire his creature.
6 questions with answers and references, ready for Sunday school, small group or a Bible quiz night.
Answer: Short of days and full of trouble, like a flower that is cut down and a shadow that flees. — Job 14:1-2
Answer: The days of man and the number of his months, with bounds he cannot pass. — Job 14:5
Answer: It can sprout again, and its shoots will not cease. — Job 14:7
Answer: Man dies, is laid low and does not rise until the heavens are no more. — Job 14:10-12
Answer: Hide him in Sheol until his wrath is past and set a time to remember him. — Job 14:13
Answer: Whether a man, once dead, will live again. — Job 14:14
Job 14 puts into words what many of us feel before the fragility of life. We know that days pass quickly, and sometimes pain leads us to ask whether there is something beyond death. In a class it can be a good starting point to talk about how we speak with children, the sick and the elderly about death.
For the Christian, Job's question has an answer that he could only long for. Christ rose, and his resurrection is the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. This does not remove the pain of grief, but it turns it into firm hope. Reading Job with the New Testament at hand helps us value what we have received and share it with someone who still wonders whether there is hope.
Job 14 ends with a person who feels only his own pain, and with that the first cycle of speeches concludes. In Job 15 the second cycle begins: Eliphaz will speak again, now more harshly, and accuse Job of undermining the fear of God with his words.
Not clearly. Job asks a question and voices a longing, but not a certainty. The Old Testament contains glimpses of hope about life after death, which the New Testament illuminates with the resurrection of Jesus. Job 14 shows the human need to which Christ responds.
It is the Hebrew word for the place of the dead, understood in the Old Testament as a shadowy place where people await God's resolution. Here Job wishes to hide in Sheol as a temporary refuge until God's wrath passes, but he does not see it as a place from which one can return on one's own.
He expresses that no one is born free from human imperfection. It is a truth that other biblical texts confirm. Job uses it to ask for compassion: if human beings are weak by nature, God should treat them with mercy and not watch them so severely.