Read Job chapter 14 online with LogosAI Bible study tools, highlights, and cross references.
Job 14 is part of “First Cycle of Dialogue” (4–14) in the outline of Job.
Job 14 summary
Job had turned from speaking to his friends, finding it to no purpose to reason with them, and here he goes on to speak to God and himself. He had reminded his friends of their frailty and mortality (Job 13:12); here he reminds himself of his own, and pleads it with God for some mitigation of his miseries. We have here an account, I. Of man's life, that it is, 1. Short (Job 14:1). 2. Sorrowful (Job 14:1). 3. Sinful (Job 14:4). 4. Stinted (Job 14:5, Job 14:14). II. Of man's death, that it puts a final period to our present life, to which we shall not again return (Job 14:7-12), that it hides us from the calamities of life (Job 14:13), destroys the hopes of life (Job 14:18, Job 14:19), sends us away from the business of life (Job 14:20), and keeps us in the dark concerning our relations in this life, how much soever we have formerly been in care about them (Job 14:21, Job 14:22), III. The use Job makes of all this. 1. He pleads it with God, who, he thought, was too strict and severe with him (Job 14:16, Job 14:17), begging that, in consideration of his frailty, he would not contend with him (Job 14:3), but grant him some respite (Job 14:6). 2. He engages himself to prepare for death (Job 14:14), and encourages himself to hope that it would be comfortable to him (Job 14:15). This chapter is proper for funeral solemnities; and serious meditations on it will help us both to get good by the death of others and to get ready for our own.
Source: Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706–21; Romans–Revelation completed by Nonconformist ministers). Public domain. Digital text: Free Use Bible API (bible.helloao.org).
1 “Man, who is born of a woman, is of few days, and full of trouble.
2 He grows up like a flower, and is cut down. He also flees like a shadow, and doesn’t continue.
3 Do you open your eyes on such a one, and bring me into judgment with you?
4 Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one.
5 Seeing his days are determined, the number of his months is with you, and you have appointed his bounds that he can’t pass.
6 Look away from him, that he may rest, until he accomplishes, as a hireling, his day.
7 “For there is hope for a tree if it is cut down, that it will sprout again, that the tender branch of it will not cease.
8 Though its root grows old in the earth, and its stock dies in the ground,
9 yet through the scent of water it will bud, and sprout boughs like a plant.
10 But man dies, and is laid low. Yes, man gives up the spirit, and where is he?
11 As the waters fail from the sea, and the river wastes and dries up,
12 so man lies down and doesn’t rise. Until the heavens are no more, they will not awake, nor be roused out of their sleep.
13 “Oh that you would hide me in Sheol, that you would keep me secret until your wrath is past, that you would appoint me a set time and remember me!
14 If a man dies, will he live again? I would wait all the days of my warfare, until my release should come.
15 You would call, and I would answer you. You would have a desire for the work of your hands.
16 But now you count my steps. Don’t you watch over my sin?
17 My disobedience is sealed up in a bag. You fasten up my iniquity.
18 “But the mountain falling comes to nothing. The rock is removed out of its place.
19 The waters wear the stones. The torrents of it wash away the dust of the earth. So you destroy the hope of man.
20 You forever prevail against him, and he departs. You change his face, and send him away.
21 His sons come to honor, and he doesn’t know it. They are brought low, but he doesn’t perceive it of them.
22 But his flesh on him has pain, and his soul within him mourns.”