Job 14:7-16 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

For there is hope of a tree, &c.— Job begins this chapter with a reflection on the shortness and wretchedness of human life, a truth which he had so sadly learned from experience. In his progress, therefore, as was natural, he seems to be casting about for arguments of support and consolation under these distressed circumstances; and particularly for proofs to confirm him in the belief of what they had received an obscure tradition of, the resurrection of mankind to another life. In Job 14:7 he touches upon that argument, from the analogy of things, which has been so often made use of in treating upon this subject: for there is hope of a tree, if be cut down, that it will sprout again: Hebrew ףּיחלי iachalip, will yet renew itself, will revive and flourish, as the spring comes on. This description is pursued for three verses. Then, Job 14:10. But men dieth, and wasteth away; man expires, and where is he? As if he had said, "After a tree is cut down, we see, nevertheless, the old stock flourish again, and send forth new branches; and shall man, then, when he once expires, be extinct for ever: is there no hope that he shall revive, and be raised again hereafter? Yes, there is, according to the doctrine delivered to us from our ancestors: but then they inform us, at the same time, that this resurrection shall not be but with the dissolution and renovation of the world; Job 14:11-12. The waters go off from the sea, and the flood (the river) will decay, and dry up. And man lieth down and riseth not till the heavens be no more; (till then) they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep." The meaning seems to be, that as we see every thing in flux, and subject to change, so the whole shall one day be changed. The sea itself will, at length, be quite absorbed; and the running rivers, which now flow perpetually, as if supplied by everlasting springs, will, nevertheless, in time quite cease and disappear. This visible frame of things shall be dissolved, and the present heavens themselves shall be no more: and then, and not before, comes the resurrection and the general judgment. The common translation is somewhat different. Though the comparison here expressed has nothing to answer to it in the Hebrew, yet, it must be owned, the כ, caph of similitude, as they call it, or the particle כמו, kemo, as, is sometimes understood; and, therefore, the passage may be so rendered, if there be occasion; and then the meaning will be, that the death of man is not like the cutting down of a tree, which soon sprouts out again, and flourishes in the same place: but rather like the drying up of a river, whose waters disappear, and we see no more of them. So man appears no more upon the stage of this world: he lieth down, and riseth not till the heavens be no more. Job proceeds: "Since, then, this is the lot of mankind, to die to all intents and purposes to the things of this world, and not to be raised again till the end of it; Job 14:13. Oh that thou wouldst hide me in the grave, (Hebrew בשׁאול bisheol, in sheol, the region of departed souls) that thou wouldest keep me secret till thy wrath be past: that thou wouldest appoint me a set time, and remember me!" As if he had said, "Tired out with the calamities of life, let me then presently undergo this lot, which must be undergone, the effect of Adam's sin and of thy wrath against it, till the time for us to remain in this separate state be fulfilled; and then remember me, and raise me to that better state which thou hast prepared for thy faithful servants." And here he breaks out into an expression of joy and admiration; Job 14:14. If a man die, shall he live, or revive? Is it true that we shall rise again to a new and better life hereafter? Let me, with hope and patience, wait this happy change, how long soever it may be in coming. All the days of my appointed time (or station) will I wait, till my change (Hebrew חליפתי chalpathi, my renovation) comes: It follows, Job 14:15. Thou shalt call, and I will answer thee; thou wilt have a desire to the work of thy hands. What can this mean, but that God would call him forth to judgment? That he should then be admitted to answer for himself before a just and equitable Judge, who knew the uprightness of his heart, and had a love for all his creatures who did not render themselves unworthy of it; and that then he should receive another sort of sentence than that which his rash, ill-judging friends had passed upon him, and be acquitted before him and all the world? though now, as it follows in the next verse, God had seemed to deal so hardly with him, had numbered all his steps, and sealed up his transgression and iniquity, as in a bag: Job 14:16-17 that is, had seemed to take account of every the smallest transgression of his life, and, by the severe chastisements inflicted upon him, had laid him open to the bitter censures and reproaches of his three friends. For his hopes of being acquitted in the day of judgment, could not entirely allay that grief and indignation which he had conceived at the cruel usage inflicted on him by these men, who measured his guilt by his afflictions, and treated him upon this account, in all their speeches, as a wicked man and a hypocrite. The reading of the LXX, understood by way of interrogation, which is Rufinus's conjecture, favours the sense that I have given of this passage. It is thus; for there is hope of a tree if it be cut down, that it will sprout again; but man dieth, and is he no more? intimating that it would be strange if a tree should revive after it was cut down; but that man, a creature of such excellence, should die, and there be an utter end of him. This kind of argument, I am sure, was much insisted on by the first apologists for Christianity; and while the Heathens complained in such strains as these, Soles occidere, et redire possunt, &c. "the sun sets and rises again; but for us, when our short day expires, there remains one perpetual night of sleep;" (Catull. Epig. 5:) the Christians argued, on the other hand, that, as the sun sets and rises again, the stars glide away and return, the trees grown old and dead in winter, recover life again, and bud and blossom in the spring; so, expectandum nobis etiam corporis ver est; "We too shall have our spring-time of resurrection;" Vide adeo quam in solatium nostri, resurrectionem futuram omnis natura meditatur, says Minutius Felix. And, as this reasoning is natural and obvious, as well as peculiarly calculated to shine in poetry, I see not why Job, in this noble poem, may not be allowed to reason in the same way. But, supposing the question where is he? to mean "he is gone for ever;" still this can only be understood of his returning no more to this world; for, as to the future resurrection, I must insist upon it that Job declares his hope of it very clearly in Job 14:14. All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come. I know it is a common opinion, that by the change here mentioned is meant the change of death; but the sense above given suits best with the context, as also with the Hebrew word חליפה, chalipah, which properly signifies a change for the better, a renewal. Peters. Houbigant renders the beginning of the 14th verse, For, though a man die, yet he shall revive again; and therefore I will wait all the days, &c.; observing, in agreement with the ingenious Mr. Peters, that nothing can be so absurd as to suppose that the words contain any doubt of a future life, according to the common version. The learned Scheuchzer on this passage, as well as many others of this book, has entered into a variety of pleasing disquisitions in physics, which are by far too copious for our work: we beg, therefore, to refer the reader to him.