Job 14

Job 14:7-22

Is There to Be Another Life? (14:7-22) As Job’s speech nears its conclusion it is clear that the author has been working toward a great climax. Beginning with the contradictions of Job’s own life, he turns next to the brevity of life in general. Then the next stage is reached when the thought centers on the fact of death itself as the great symbol both of Job’s extreme dilemma and of the transitoriness of man’s life. In Job 14:2 man has been compared to a flower, withering almost as soon as it blooms. In Job 14:7 man is contrasted with a tree, as Job declares that unlike man, nature shows some faint hope of survival beyond what seems to be death.

The image is clear enough without explanation, as the contrast is drawn between man’s life and that of a felled tree. The tree may “come back to life” but man dies and that is the end, final and complete. There is no place in the Old Testament where the common expectation and the common lack of hope are more powerfully set forth than here. Job insists, against all suppositions to the contrary, that death is the end, that Sheol rather than life is man’s final destiny (on “Sheol” see Job 3:11-19). That he makes the point with such strong insistence may indicate that the book was written at a time when the possibility of an afterlife was the subject of popular discussion.

At verse 13 a remarkable change occurs. Job has been dwelling upon the “Nevermore” placed by death over against man’s life. This death will be a “sleep” in Sheol. But suddenly a new possibility breaks in. Suppose there were something beyond Sheol! Suppose Sheol were for him a time of waiting, so that beyond its limits God would call him into renewed meeting. This possibility raises the fascinating question in verse 14. It is a question for Job, not an affirmation, but it is extraordinary, given the facts in his case, that the thought should occur at all.

It is evident that the only basis for the possibility is Job’s knowledge of God and the prior fellowship with God which he had enjoyed. Neither nature nor his own situation, nor even the word of God in times past, gave Job reason to believe. Here is a man who is thrown back entirely on God, but who, out of his knowledge of God, comes to the conclusion that it is possible that relationship with God is not to be ended by death.

This is not Job’s greatest moment, but light is beginning to break. It does not come in full flood yet — in fact, not until the resurrection of Christ is the light seen in its fullness — but it is dawning here. All of Job’s expressions about this possibility point to the personal character of his thought, as he dreams of God’s calling him in love and drawing him into an appointed meeting.

Verses 16 and 17 admit of two possible interpretations. In the Revised Standard Version they are made to be a continuation of Job’s passionate imagining of what it would be like to meet God beyond Sheol. Thus part of this meeting would be full and complete forgiveness. It must be admitted, however, that as yet Job has not accepted the fact that any such sins or iniquities need pardon. It is possible that the verses are to be taken in the opposite sense, and are a vivid self -reminder of the actualities of the present in contrast with the kind of future of which Job has been dreaming.

That the second interpretation is the more likely is indicated by verses 18-22, where the mood is quite pessimistic. After Job’s hypothetical question he comes back to the realities of nature and of his own life. Although nature gives a faint hint of hope (Job 14:7) it gives more evidence of final dissolution. Mountains crumble, even rocks are worn away, and similarly the “hope” of man is no solid, lasting hope. In the end Job comes back to the original conclusion which he had reached in Job 14:10-12. He can expect only death and beyond that nothing.

Finally he takes a look at a possible solution, often proposed, that man has a real future in the generations that are to follow him. In brief contempt Job demolishes this as a false hope with no meaning for a man in deep tragedy. If succeeding generations are to be happy, it will bring the sufferer no release. Men do not know or profit from the experiences of their children; they know only the pains of their own existence (for a stronger statement of the same thought see Job 21:19-21).