Job 14

Job 14:1

JOB’S ELEGY ON DEATHThere is nothing any truer than that; trouble is the common denominator of mankind. All of us have had trouble. As Eliphaz had said, “Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward” (Job_5:7). Trouble is a language that the whole human family knows.

Job 14:2

Job says that death is inevitable and that we must depart from this world. Life is like a shadow. When the sun goes down, what happens to the shadow? It is gone.

Job 14:3

Like a flower that has been cut down, or as a shadow that disappears, is my life. And yet God sees me and deals with me.

Job 14:4

Then he goes on to state a great truth. We were all born sinners. David said, “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Psa_51:5). How could any of us be sinless creatures when we had a sinful father and a sinful mother? You cannot bring a clean thing out of an unclean. That is a universal rule.

Job 14:5

Job says that as a human being he feels that he is pretty well hemmed in. David wrote, “… though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death …” (Psa_23:4). Was he referrring to his death bed? No. From the very minute of birth when we start out in life we are walking through a canyon where the shadow of death is on us, and we keep going until it gets narrower and narrower and finally leads to death. We are always walking in the shadow of death! Someone has put it like this: “The moment that gives us life begins to take it away from us.”

Job 14:7

A man may have made a tremendous success down here, been a famous person, and then he is gone. Where is he? There may be a few monuments around for him. Maybe a street or two are named after him. What good is that? What does that amount to? Here is a breakthrough that reveals the faith of Job.

Job 14:14

It has always been a big question with man. “If a man die, shall he live again?” Even in death Job knows that God is going to call him, and he will answer that call. In other words, God is not through with us at our death. Death is not the end of it all. We will hear Job say again later on: “… I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me” (Job_19:25-27). This entire chapter is a great elegy on death. I recommend that you read it in its entirety.