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Commentary on Job 14 verses 7–15
We have seen what Job has to say concerning life; let us now see what he has to say concerning death, which his thoughts were very much conversant with, now that he was sick and sore. It is not unseasonable, when we are in health, to think of dying; but it is an inexcusable incogitancy if, when we are already taken into the custody of death's messengers, we look upon it as a thing at a distance. Job had already shown that death will come, and that its hour is already fixed. Now here he shows,
I. That death is a removal for ever out of this world. This he had spoken of before (Job 7:9, Job 7:10), and now he mentions it again; for, though it be a truth that needs not be proved, yet it needs to be much considered, that it may be duly improved.
1.A man cut down by death will not revive again, as a tree cut down will. What hope there is of a tree he shows very elegantly, Job 14:7-9. If the body of the tree be cut down, and only the stem or stump left in the ground, though it seem dead and dry, yet it will shoot out young boughs again, as if it were but newly planted. The moisture of the earth and the rain of heaven are, as it were, scented and perceived by the stump of a tree, and they have an influence upon it to revive it; but the dead body of a man would not perceive them, nor be in the least affected by them. In Nebuchadnezzar's dream, when his being deprived of the use of his reason was signified by the cutting down of a tree, his return to it again was signified by the leaving of the stump in the earth with a band of iron and brass to be wet with the dew of heaven, Dan 4:15. But man has no such prospect of a return to life. The vegetable life is a cheap and easy thing: the scent of water will recover it. The animal life, in some insects and fowls, is so: the heat of the sun retrieves it. But the rational soul, when once retired, is too great, too noble, a thing to be recalled by any of the powers of nature; it is out of the reach of sun or rain, and cannot be restored but by the immediate operations of Omnipotence itself; for (Job 14:10) man dieth and wasteth, away, yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? Two words are here used for man: - Geber, a mighty man, though mighty, dies; Adam, a man of the earth, because earthy, gives up the ghost. Note, Man is a dying creature. He is here described by what occurs, (1.) Before death: he wastes away; he is continually wasting, dying daily, spending upon the quick stock of life. Sickness and old age are wasting things to the flesh, the strength, the beauty. (2.) In death: he gives up the ghost; the soul leaves the body, and returns to God who gave it, the Father of spirits. (3.) After death: Where is he? He is not where he was; his place knows him no more; but is he nowhere? So some read it. Yes, he is somewhere; and it is a very awful consideration to think where those are that have given up the ghost, and where we shall be when we give it up. It has gone to the world of spirits, gone into eternity, gone to return no more to this world.
2.A man laid down in the grave will not rise up again, Job 14:11, Job 14:12. Every night we lie down to sleep, and in the morning we awake and rise again; but at death we must lie down in the grave, not to awake or rise again to such a world, such a state, as we are now in, never to awake or arise until the heavens, the faithful measures of time, shall be no more, and consequently time itself shall come to an end and be swallowed up in eternity; so that the life of man may fitly be compared to the waters of a land-flood, which spread far and make a great show, but they are shallow, and when they are cut off from the sea or river, the swelling and overflowing of which was the cause of them, they soon decay and dry up, and their place knows them no more. The waters of life are soon exhaled and disappear. The body, like some of those waters, sinks and soaks into the earth, and is buried there; the soul, like others of them, is drawn upwards, to mingle with the waters above the firmament. The learned Sir Richard Blackmore makes this also to be a dissimilitude. If the waters decay and be dried up in the summer, yet they will return again in the winter; but it is not so with the life of man. Take part of his paraphrase in his own words: -
A flowing river, or a standing lake,
May their dry banks and naked shores forsake;
Their waters may exhale and upward move,
Their channel leave to roll in clouds above;
But the returning water will restore
What in the summer they had lost before:
But if, O man! thy vital streams desert
Their purple channels and defraud the heart,
With fresh recruits they ne'er will be supplied,
Nor feel their leaping life's returning tide.
II. That yet there will be a return of man to life again in another world, at the end of time, when the heavens are no more. Then they shall awake and be raised out of their sleep. The resurrection of the dead was doubtless an article of Job's creed, as appears, Job 19:26, and to that, it should seem, he has an eye here, where, in the belief of that, we have three things: -
1.A humble petition for a hiding-place in the grave, Job 14:13. It was not only a passionate weariness of this life that he wished to die, but in a pious assurance of a better life, to which at length he should arise. O that thou wouldst hide me in the grave! The grave is not only a resting-place, but a hiding-place, to the people of God. God has the key of the grave, to let in now and to let out at the resurrection. He hides men in the grave, as we hide our treasure in a place of secresy and safety; and he who hides will find, and nothing shall be lost. "O that thou wouldst hide me, not only from the storms and troubles of this life, but for the bliss and glory of a better life! Let me lie in the grave, reserved for immortality, in secret from all the world, but not from thee, not from those eyes which saw my substance when first curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth," Psa 139:15, Psa 139:16. There let me lie, (1.) Until thy wrath be past. As long as the bodies of the saints lie in the grave, so long there are some remains of that wrath which they were by nature children of, so long they are under some of the effects of sin; but, when the body is raised, it is wholly past - death, the last enemy, will then be totally destroyed. (2.) Until the set time comes for my being remembered, as Noah was remembered in the ark (Gen 8:1), where God not only hid him from the destruction of the old world, but reserved him for the reparation of a new world. The bodies of the saints shall not be forgotten in the grave. There is a time appointed, a time set, for their being enquired after. We cannot be sure that we shall look through the darkness of our present troubles and see good days after them in this world; but, if we can but get well to the grave, we may with an eye of faith look through the darkness of that, as Job here, and see better days on the other side of it, in a better world.
2.A holy resolution patiently to attend the will of God both in his death and his resurrection (Job 14:14): If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed time will I wait until my change come. Job's friends proving miserable comforters, he set himself to be the more his own comforter. His case was now bad, but he pleases himself with the expectation of a change. I think it cannot be meant of his return to a prosperous condition in this world. His friends indeed flattered him with the hopes of that, but he himself all along despaired of it. Comforts founded upon uncertainties at best must needs be uncertain comforts; and therefore, no doubt, it is something more sure than that which he here bears up himself with the expectation of. The change he waits for must therefore be understood either, (1.) Of the change of the resurrection, when the vile body shall be changed (Phi 3:21), and a great and glorious change it will be; and then that question, If a man die, shall he live again? must be taken by way of admiration. "Strange! Shall these dry bones live! If so, all the time appointed for the continuance of the separation between soul and body my separate soul shall wait until that change comes, when it shall be united again to the body, and my flesh also shall rest in hope." Psa 16:9. Or, (2.) Of the change at death. "If a man die, shall he live again? No, not such a life as he now lives; and therefore I will patiently wait until that change comes which will put a period to my calamities, and not impatiently wish for the anticipation of it, as I have done." Observe here, [1.] That it is a serious thing to die; it is a work by itself. It is a change; there is a visible change in the body, its appearance altered, its actions brought to an end, but a greater change with the soul, which quits the body, and removes to the world of spirits, finishes its state of probation and enters upon that of retribution. This change will come, and it will be a final change, not like the transmutations of the elements, which return to their former state. No, we must die, not thus to live again. It is but once to die, and that had need be well done that is to be done but once. An error here is fatal, conclusive, and not again to be rectified. [2.] That therefore it is the duty of every one of us to wait for that change, and to continue waiting all the days of our appointed time. The time of life is an appointed time; that time is to be reckoned by days; and those days are to be spent in waiting for our change. That is, First, We must expect that it will come, and think much of it. Secondly, We must desire that it would come, as those that long to be with Christ. Thirdly, We must be willing to tarry until it does come, as those that believe God's time to be the best. Fourthly, We must give diligence to get ready against it comes, that it may be a blessed change to us.
3.A joyful expectation of bliss and satisfaction in this (Job 14:15): Then thou shalt call, and I will answer thee. Now, he was under such a cloud that he could not, he durst not, answer (Job 9:15, Job 9:35; Job 13:22); but he comforted himself with this, that there would come a time when God would call and he should answer. Then, that is, (1.) At the resurrection, "Thou shalt call me out of the grave, by the voice of the archangel, and I will answer and come at the call." The body is the work of God's hands, and he will have a desire to that, having prepared a glory for it. Or, (2.) At death: "Thou shalt call my body to the grave, and my soul to thyself, and I will answer, Ready, Lord, ready - Coming, coming; here I am." Gracious souls can cheerfully answer death's summons, and appear to his writ. Their spirits are not forcibly required from them (as Luk 12:20), but willingly resigned by them, and the earthly tabernacle not violently pulled down, but voluntarily laid down, with this assurance, "Thou wilt have a desire to the work of thy hands. Thou hast mercy in store for me, not only as made by thy providence, but new-made by thy grace;" otherwise he that made them will not save them. Note, Grace in the soul is the work of God's own hands, and therefore he will not forsake it in this world (Psa 138:8), but will have a desire to it, to perfect it in the other, and to crown it with endless glory.
The meaning is, “Oh that in the time when you were inflamed with rage against me, you would have kept me in custody in the netherworld—there, in fact, custody is not due to faults—and that you would not have forgotten me completely but would have set a time for my custody there!” Job has given us a reason for his desiring death. Without trials, he says, while being kept there, I will wait for resurrection. In fact, Job says, if a person dies after completing the days of this life, he does not withdraw into nonexistence but lives in his soul and waits for resurrection.
13. That before the coming of the Mediator between God and man, every person, though he might have been of a pure and approved life, descended to the prisons of hell, there can be no doubt; in that man, who fell by his own act, was unable by his own act to return to the rest of Paradise, except that He should come, Who by the mystery of His Incarnation should open the way into that same Paradise. For hence after the sin of the first man it is recorded, that a flaming sword was placed at the entrance of Paradise [Gen. 3, 24], which is also called ‘moveable,’ [versatilis, V.] in that the time should come one day, that it might even be removed. Nor yet do we maintain that the souls of the righteous did so go down into hell, that they were imprisoned in places of punishment; but it is to be believed that there are higher regions in hell and that there are lower regions apart, so that both the righteous might be at rest in the upper regions, and the unrighteous be tormented in the lower ones. Hence the Psalmist, by reason of the grace of God preventing him, says, Thou hast delivered my soul from the lowest hell. [Ps. 86, 13] Thus blessed Job before the coming of the Mediator, knowing of his going down into hell, implores the protecting hand of his Maker there, in order that he might be a stranger to the places of punishment; where, while he is brought to enjoy rest, he might be kept hidden from punishment. Hence he subjoins;
That thou wouldest keep me secret, until Thy wrath quite [pertransiit, V.] pass by.
14. For the wrath of Almighty God does herein execute the force of its severity every day, that those who live unworthily it swallows up in most worthy punishments. Which wrath now indeed ‘passes by,’ but at the end it ‘quite passes by,’ in that now it is executed, but at the end of the world it is finally consummated. Yet this wrath as to the souls of the righteous ‘quite passed by’ on the coming of our Redeemer, in that those the Mediator between God and man brought back from the prisons of hell to the joys of Paradise, when He did Himself go down there in pity. And on this subject it is necessary to be known, that the term ‘wrath’ does not suit the Divine Being, in that no disquieting influence disorders the simple nature of God. Whence it is said to Him, But Thou, Ruler of power, judgest with tranquillity, and orderest us with exceeding great regard. [Wisd. 12, 18] But because the souls of the righteous were one day to be set free by the coming of the Mediator from the regions of hell, though not the places of punishment, this too the righteous man foresees, and beseeching adds;
And appoint me a set time, when Thou shouldest remember me.
15. But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the Law, to redeem them that were under the Law. [Gal. 4, 4. 5.] Thus the man of the Lord foreseeing this redemption, wherein many of the Gentile world as well were destined to be set free, as he himself says; Though these things Thou dost hide in Thine heart, yet I know that Thou dost remember all things; [Job 10, 13] prays for a time for the remembering of him, to be appointed him with Almighty God. For it is hence that the Lord saith in the Gospel, And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things unto Me [John 12, 32], i.e. ‘all things Elect;’ for neither did the Lord, when He returned from hell, draw the Elect and the lost together, but He bore off all those things from thence, which He did foreknow would have attached themselves to Him. Hence He also says by the Prophet Hosea, I will be thy death, O death; I will be the biting of thee, O hell. [Hos. 13, 14] Now what we put to death, we do our best that it should not be at all, and of that which we bite, a part we take away, and a part we leave. Therefore whereas the Lord wholly destroyed death in His Elect members, He proved Himself the ‘Death of death;’ but whereas He took a part from hell, and left a part, He did not wholly destroy but did ‘bite hell.’ Therefore He says, I will be thy Death, O death; i.e. ‘in Mine Elect, I utterly destroy thee.—I will he the biting of thee, O hell; in that in taking those away, I pierce thee in part.’ And so let blessed Job, knowing of this coming of our Redeemer to hell, pray for what he foresaw in the future, and let him say, And that Thou shouldest appoint me a set time wherein Thou wouldest remember me.
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SUMMARY
Job 14:13 captures the heart-wrenching lament of a man engulfed by unimaginable suffering, articulating a desperate plea for a temporary refuge in the grave. This cry is not for annihilation but for a divinely orchestrated hiding place from God's perceived wrath, coupled with a remarkable, defiant hope that God would, at an appointed future time, remember him and bring about his restoration or vindication. It is a profoundly human expression, blending the depths of despair with a nascent, yet powerful, faith in God's ultimate sovereignty and faithfulness beyond the immediate horizon of death.
CONTEXT
EXPOSITION AND ANALYSIS
Key Word Analysis
Verse Breakdown
Literary Devices
Job 14:13 is a masterful example of Lament literature, a common genre in the Psalms and prophetic books, where the speaker pours out their grief, pain, and confusion to God. The verse employs Apostrophe, a direct address to an absent or abstract entity, as Job speaks directly to God, even in his perceived abandonment. There is a profound Paradox at play: Job seeks refuge in death (the grave) as a means to escape suffering, yet simultaneously holds onto a hope for life and remembrance from that very death. This creates a powerful Juxtaposition of despair and hope, highlighting the complexity and depth of Job's faith. The phrase "appoint me a set time, and remember me!" functions as a form of Proto-Resurrection Hope or a Prophetic Utterance, hinting at a future divine act that transcends the immediate reality of death, even though a full doctrine of resurrection was not yet fully developed. The imagery of being "hidden" and "kept secret" creates a sense of profound vulnerability and a desperate longing for divine protection from the overwhelming forces assailing him.
THEOLOGICAL AND THEMATIC CONNECTIONS
Job 14:13 stands as a profound theological statement on the human condition in the face of immense suffering and the enduring, though often paradoxical, nature of faith. It validates the raw honesty of human lament, demonstrating that it is permissible and even necessary to express the deepest anguish and confusion to God. The verse grapples with the mystery of divine justice and the problem of suffering, as Job perceives God's hand in his affliction. Most significantly, it offers an early, nascent articulation of hope beyond the grave, hinting at a future where God's faithfulness will overcome the apparent finality of death. This hope, rooted in God's sovereignty over time and His capacity to "remember" (i.e., actively intervene and restore), provides a vital theological bridge from the Old Testament understanding of Sheol to the later, more developed doctrines of resurrection.
REFLECTION AND APPLICATION
Job 14:13 offers profound comfort and insight for anyone enduring extreme suffering, whether physical, emotional, or spiritual. It reminds us that our faith journey is not always one of unwavering joy, but often includes seasons of deep lament, questioning, and even despair. Job's raw honesty in crying out to God, even wishing for death as a temporary escape, validates our own struggles and gives us permission to bring our most desperate and uncomfortable emotions before our Creator. This verse teaches us that even in the darkest valleys, a flicker of hope for God's future remembrance and intervention can persist. It encourages us to cling to the belief that God is sovereign over all things, including our appointed times of life, death, and future restoration. For the believer, Job's cry foreshadows the ultimate hope of resurrection and eternal life, where death is indeed but a temporary sleep, awaiting God's appointed time for glorious new life. It challenges us to trust in God's plan, even when it extends far beyond our immediate understanding, pointing towards a future hope that transcends our present pain and promises ultimate vindication and reunion.
Questions for Reflection
FAQ
Is Job asking for suicide in this verse?
Answer: No, Job is not asking for suicide. His plea is explicitly directed to God: "O that thou wouldest hide me in the grave." This is a desperate prayer for divine intervention, asking God to orchestrate his temporary removal from his suffering through death, with the explicit expectation that God would later "remember" him and bring him forth. It is an appeal for God to act, not an intention to take his own life. Job's request is for a divinely appointed respite, a divinely controlled entry into Sheol, not self-destruction.
What does Job mean by "thy wrath" in this context?
Answer: In this context, "thy wrath" refers to Job's perception that his intense and prolonged suffering is a direct manifestation of God's anger or judgment against him. Despite his unwavering insistence on his own innocence, Job interprets his physical ailments, emotional anguish, and social ostracism as active divine displeasure. He believes that God is actively afflicting him, and he longs for this period of divine wrath to pass, allowing for a time of peace or restoration. It's important to note that this is Job's interpretation of his circumstances, reflecting his profound bewilderment, not necessarily a definitive theological statement about God's actual disposition towards him, which the book of Job ultimately challenges and refines through God's own speeches in Job 38-41.
How does Job's hope here relate to the concept of resurrection?
Answer: While not a fully developed doctrine of bodily resurrection as found in the New Testament, Job's desire for a "set time" when God would "remember him" from the grave is a significant proto-resurrection hope. It suggests a belief that death is not the absolute end and that God has the power and intention to recall individuals from Sheol. This is a remarkable leap of faith for its time, hinting at a future beyond death where God's justice and faithfulness would be fully revealed. This nascent hope finds its most explicit Old Testament expression later in Job 19:25-27, where Job declares his conviction that his Redeemer lives and will stand upon the earth, and that he himself will see God even after his skin is destroyed, implying a bodily restoration.
CHRIST-CENTERED FULFILLMENT
Job's desperate cry in Job 14:13 for a temporary hiding in the grave "until thy wrath be past" and for God to "appoint me a set time, and remember me!" finds its ultimate and glorious fulfillment in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Jesus, the sinless Son of God, truly was "hidden in the grave" for a "set time"—three days and three nights, as foretold by the sign of Jonah (Matthew 12:40). He entered the realm of death, not as one under divine wrath for His own sin, but as the Lamb of God who took upon Himself the full wrath of God against humanity's sin (Romans 5:9). His death was the ultimate passing of God's wrath, securing redemption for all who believe. Furthermore, God did indeed "remember" Him, not by merely recalling Him to mind, but by raising Him from the dead on the third day, demonstrating His absolute power over death and Sheol (Acts 2:24). Christ's resurrection is the "firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep" (1 Corinthians 15:20), guaranteeing that all who are "in Christ" will also be remembered and raised by God at His appointed time (John 5:28-29). Thus, Job's ancient, yearning hope for a future beyond the grave, for divine remembrance and vindication, is perfectly and powerfully realized in the resurrection of Jesus, who is Himself "the resurrection and the life" (John 11:25), offering eternal life and a glorious future to all who trust in Him.