Job 14:19

Job 14 is Job’s meditation on how short and fragile human life is. Earlier in the chapter he says, “For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again.” A man is different: “But man dieth, and wasteth away: yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?... So man lieth down, and riseth not: till the heavens be no more” (Job 14:7–12). Then he longs for God to hide him in the grave until his wrath is past, and to appoint him a set time and remember him (Job 14:13).

Verses 18 to 22 bring the chapter and the speech to an end. Job moves from the tree, which is fragile, to mountains and rocks, the most lasting things he can see, and finds that even they give way. If they wear down, a man’s brief life has no hope of renewal in this world. His friends hold that suffering comes from sin, and Job insists on his innocence, so he brings his complaint to God as the one who is acting: “thou washest away”, “thou destroyest”, “thou prevailest”, “thou changest”, “sendest him away”.

This is the voice of lament, which runs through Job’s speeches from his first cry in Job 3. He has already said that his days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle “and are spent without hope” (Job 7:6–7), asked “What is my strength, that I should hope?” (Job 6:11), begged God to let him alone for the few days he has (Job 10:20), and said that God hunts him like a fierce lion (Job 10:16). These five verses gather all of that into one closing picture.

“And surely the mountain falling cometh to nought, and the rock is removed out of his place.” In Scripture mountains and great rocks stand for what is firm and lasting. God was God before the mountains were brought forth (Psalm 90:2), and those who trust in the LORD “shall be as mount Zion, which cannot be removed, but abideth for ever” (Psalm 125:1). Job takes the very picture of permanence and shows it giving way, as erosion, landslides and earthquakes reshape the land over long ages, and he reads in it the fate of his own life.

The mountain is har, a mountain or range of hills, and “falling” is nâphal, the common verb to fall. “Cometh to nought” translates nâbêl, which means to wilt, and so to fade, fall away or fail. Figuratively the same verb can mean to be foolish or wicked, but here it is the wilting, so the falling mountain withers away like a plant. The opening “surely”, ʼûwlâm, marks what follows as certain.

The rock is tsûwr, a rock or cliff, the word Scripture also uses when it calls God the Rock. It is “removed”, ʻâthaq, a verb meaning to move or be moved and also to grow old, “out of his place”, mâqôwm, the ordinary word for a place or spot. The two halves of the verse say the same thing in two pictures, and together they mean that nothing on earth is beyond decay.

“The waters wear the stones” uses shâchaq, to beat fine or wear away by rubbing. Soft water does it slowly and steadily, and the hardest stone gives way. Then the picture changes to a flood: “thou washest away the things which grow out of the dust of the earth.” The verb shâṭaph means to overflow or sweep away with force, and elsewhere to rinse or wash. Here it is the flood that carries off the plants rooted in the soil, a picture of life and of all that people build on the ground they live from. A psalm uses the same pictures for us: “Thou carriest them away as with a flood... in the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth” (Psalm 90:5–6). Isaiah says, “All flesh is grass... The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever” (Isaiah 40:6–8).

“And thou destroyest the hope of man” is where the slow wearing and the sudden flood lead. The verb is ʼâbad, which properly means to wander away or be lost, and so to perish. In this form it means to make something perish, to destroy. Job feels that God has done to hope what water does to stone. For a man of his day, hope took in health and prosperity, an honourable name, sons to carry on his line and a peaceful end, and Job feels every one of them taken from him.

“Thou prevailest for ever against him” uses tâqaph, to overpower or prevail. At the end of every life, God’s will stands and man yields. As Daniel records, God “doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth” (Daniel 4:35). “For ever” sets God’s lasting power beside man’s brief life: “and he passeth.” The verb behind “passeth” is hâlak, to walk or go, and a man goes on his way and is gone. A psalm says of our years, “it is soon cut off, and we fly away” (Psalm 90:10), and James asks, “For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away” (James 4:14).

“His sons come to honour, and he knoweth it not; and they are brought low, but he perceiveth it not of them.” The word for sons is bên, son. To “come to honour” is kâbad, which means to be heavy, and in a good sense to be weighty, honourable or glorious. “Brought low” is tsâʻar, to be small or of little account. Between the two lies every fortune a family can have, from high standing to disgrace. In Job’s world a man’s legacy lived on in his children, and their success was a father’s pride while their misfortune was his sorrow and shame. Death cuts him off from both.

Two verbs say he is unaware. “Knoweth” is yâdaʻ, to know or perceive, and “perceiveth” is bîyn, to discern or understand. With both negated, the dead man neither hears what becomes of his sons nor can take it in. The rise and fall of a family’s name, which matter so much to the living, are beyond the reach of the one who founded it.

“But his flesh upon him shall have pain, and his soul within him shall mourn.” The flesh, bâsâr, is the body, and often man as a frail and mortal creature. Its pain is kâʼab, to feel pain or to grieve. The soul, nephesh, from a word for breathing, is the living being, the life and self, the whole inner person. It mourns, ʼâbal, the word for lament and the grief that comes with bereavement and loss. “Upon him” and “within him” press home that this pain is his own and stays with him, so body and inner self suffer together.

The “But” sets this against verse 21. Whatever becomes of his sons is out of his hands, and what remains to him is his own pain and sorrow as he goes down to death. With these words Job’s speech ends.

Every picture in these verses finds its answer in Jesus Christ. Where Job saw the rock removed out of its place, Paul says of the rock that followed Israel, “and that Rock was Christ” (1 Corinthians 10:4). God will shake heaven and earth once more, “that those things which cannot be shaken may remain”, and we receive “a kingdom which cannot be moved” (Hebrews 12:26–28). The heavens and the earth “shall wax old like a garment”, but “thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end” (Psalm 102:25–27). “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever” (Hebrews 13:8), and “by him all things consist” (Colossians 1:17).

Where Job said that God destroys the hope of man, God “hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away” (1 Peter 1:3–4). That hope is “an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast” (Hebrews 6:19), and it is “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). If our earthly house is dissolved, “we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Corinthians 5:1). Christ “hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Timothy 1:10). He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), and whoever believes in him should “not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

Where Job said that the dying man’s flesh has pain and his soul mourns, the Son of God took both on himself. In Gethsemane he said, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death” (Matthew 26:38), and on the cross he cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). He is the “man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief”, who “was wounded for our transgressions” (Isaiah 53:3–5). His suffering redeemed us, and his rising swallowed up death in victory. Paul’s whole chapter on the resurrection, 1 Corinthians 15, answers the fear that death is the end of us, and it closes, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?... thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:54–57). Jesus promises, “because I live, ye shall live also” (John 14:19).

These five verses give us the honest words of a believer who has lost everything he could see, and God has kept them in his word. Job brings his anguish straight to God, and even his accusations are spoken to him by a man whose bond with God is strained and still holding. The verses also tell the truth about this world. Mountains, health, possessions, a family’s standing and our own lives all wear down and wash away, and the God who prevails for ever is the one who remains.

That is where the passage leads. Lamentations, another book born of grief, finds its hope in the same Lord: “This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope... great is thy faithfulness. The LORD is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him” (Lamentations 3:21–26). The hope Job thought destroyed is held now by the risen Christ, who knew pain of body and sorrow of soul and whose kingdom stands for ever. When the waters wear the stones of your own life, that Rock remains.