Job 14:14

If a man die,.... This is said not as if it was a matter of doubt, he had before asserted it; as sure as men have sinned, so sure shall they die; nothing is more certain than death, it is appointed

If a man die, shall he live again? all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come. Shall he live?

Shall he live again? i.e. he shall not, namely, in this world, as was said before. The affirmative question is equivalent to an absolute denial, as , and every where. Seeing death puts an end to all men’ s hopes of any comfortable being here, because man once dead never returns to life, I will therefore wait on God, and hope for his favour whilst I live, and it is possible to enjoy it, and will continue waiting from time to time until my change come, i.e. either, 1. Death, the great and last change; which is expressed by the root of this word, . Or, 2. The change of my condition for the better, which you upon your terms encourage me to expect, and which I yet trust in God I shall enjoy; for this word properly signifies vicissitudes or changes in one’ s condition; and this seems to suit best with the following verse. And this change, or a comfortable life here, Job so heartily wisheth, not only from that love of life and comfort which is naturally implanted in all men, good and bad, and is not forbidden by God, which also was stronger in those Old Testament saints, when the discoveries of God’ s grace to sinners, and of eternal life, were much darker than now they are; but also because this would be an effectual vindication of his own integrity and good name, and of the honour of religion, both which did suffer some eclipse from Job’ s extreme calamities, as is evident from the discourses of his friends.

Job 14:14 If a man die, shall he live [again]? all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come.Ver. 14. If a man die, shall he live again?] This he speaketh in way of admiration at that glorious work of the resurrection. See the like question Job 15:11 Genesis 3:1; Genesis 17:17. So the apostle, Romans 8:30-31, having spoken of those glorious things, predestination, vocation, justification, glorification, concludeth in these words, "What shall we say then?" We cannot tell what to say to these things, so much are we amazed at the greatness of God’ s goodness in them. Surely, as they have a lovely scarlet blush of Christ’ s blood upon them, so they are rayed upon with a beam of divine love, to them that are in Christ. We read of that godly and learned Scotch divine, Mr John Knox, that a little before his death he got up out of his bed, and being asked by his friends, why, being so sick, he would offer to rise, and not rather take his rest? he answered, that he had all the last night been taken up in the meditation of the resurrection, and that he would now go up into the pulpit, that he might impart to others the comforts which thereby himself had received. And surely if he had been able to have done as he desired, I know not what text fitter for his purpose he could have taken, than these words of Job, "If a man die, shall he live again?" He shall without question; and those that deny it or doubt it (as the Sadducees of old, and some brain sick people of late), they err, not knowing the Scriptures (this among the rest), which are express for it, and the power of God, Matthew 22:29, being herein worse than devils, which believe it and tremble, worse than some heathens, who held there would be a resurrection, as Zoroastes, Theopompus, Plato, &c., worse than Turks, who at this day confess and wait for a resurrection of the body at such a time as the fearful trumpet (which they call Soor) shall be sounded by Mahomet, say they, at the command of the great God of the judgment. All the days of mine appointed time (or warfare) will I wait, till my change come] i.e. Till my death, (Proverbs 31:8, men appointed to die are called in the original children of change) or till the resurrection come, when we shall all be changed, 1 Corinthians 15:51, our vile bodies shall be changed and conformed to Christ’ s most glorious body (the standard), Philippians 3:21, in beauty, agility, impassibility, and other angelical perfections. When I awake, saith David, sc. at that general resurrection, I shall be full of thine image, Psalms 17:15. I shall be brought from the jaws of death to the joys of eternal life, where are riches without rust, pleasures without pain, &c. Three glimpses of this glorious change were seen: 1. In Moses’ face. 2.

(14) If a man die, shall he live again?—Why ask the question if it were absolutely certain that he would not? “All the days of my warfare—i.e., as long as I live—I will hope, till my change or transition from life to death comes, that Thou shalt call and I shall answer Thee, that Thou wilt long for the work of Thine hands.”

Verse 14. If a man die, shall he live again?] The Chaldee translates, If a wicked man die, can he ever live again? or, he can never live again. The Syriac and Arabic thus: "If a man die, shall he revive? Yea, all the days of his youth he awaits till his old age come." The Septuagint: "If a man die, shall he live, having accomplished the days of his life? I will endure till I live again." Here is no doubt, but a strong persuasion, of the certainty of the general resurrection. All the days of my appointed time] צבאי tsebai, "of my warfare;" see on Job 7:1. Will I await till חליפתי chaliphathi, my renovation, come. This word is used to denote the springing again of grass, Psalms 90:5-6, after it had once withered, which is in itself a very expressive emblem of the resurrection.

13–15. Having pursued the destiny of man through all its steps down to its lowest, its complete extinction in death, Job, with a revulsion created by the instinctive demands of the human spirit, rises to the thought that there might be another life after this one. This thought is expressed in the form of an impassioned desire. To understand these verses the Hebrew conception of death must be remembered. Death was not an end of personal existence: the dead person subsisted, he did not live. He descended into Sheol, the abode of deceased persons. His existence was a dreamy shadow of his past life. He had no communion with the living, whether men or God; comp. Job 3:12-19; Job 10:21-22, Job 14:20-22. This idea of death is not strictly the teaching of revelation, it is the popular idea from which revelation starts, and revelation on the question rather consists in exhibiting to us how the pious soul struggled with this popular conception and sought to overcome it, and how faith demanded and realized, as faith does, its demand, that the communion with God enjoyed in this life should not be interrupted in death. This was in short a demand and a faith that the state of Sheol should be overleaped, and that the believing soul should be “taken” by God in death to Himself, cf. Psalms 16:10; Psalms 49:15; Psalms 73:24. This was the solution that generally presented itself to the mind when death was contemplated. The present passage differs in two particulars. It does not exhibit such assured faith as these passages in the Psalms. The problem before the Psalmists was a much simpler one than that before Job. They were men who, when they wrote their words of faith, enjoyed God’s fellowship, and their faith protested against this fellowship being interrupted in death. But Job has lost the sense of God’s fellowship through his afflictions, which are to his mind proof of God’s estrangement from him, hence he has so to speak a double obstacle to overcome, where the Psalmists had only one, and this makes him do no more here than utter a prayer, while the Psalmists expressed a firm assurance. In the following chapters, especially ch. 19, Job also rises to assurance. In another particular this passage differs from these Psalms. It contemplates a different and much more complete solution of the problem. In both the hope of immortality has a purely religious foundation. It springs from the irrepressible longing for communion with God. The Psalmists, in the actual enjoyment of this communion, either protest against death absolutely (Psalms 16), and demand a continuance in life that this fellowship may continue—that is, they rise to the idea of true immortality; or, contemplating death as a fact, they protest against the popular conception of it, and demand that the deceased person shall not sink into Sheol, but pass across its gulf to God. Job’s conception is different from either of these, because his circumstances are different.

If a man die, shall he live again? - This is a sudden transition in the thought. He had unconsciously worked himself up almost to the belief that man might live again even on the earth.

14. Shall he live? — That which follows is equivalent to an affirmative answer to this momentous question, since Job is emboldened, to wait or hope (yahhal) till his change or reviviscence shall come.