Job 14: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Job continues speaking about how short and hard human life is. He compares people to a flower that is cut down and to a shadow that does not stay, and asks God to look away and let a man have some rest. He points out that a cut-down tree can sprout again at the smell of water, but a person who dies does not get up, and he asks whether a dead man can live again. He wishes God would hide him until God's anger passed and then remember him, and he ends saying God wears people down until they pass away, cut off even from news of their own children.

Claim by Claim

1. 14:1
   • A human being is born of a woman.
   • A human being's days are few.
   • A human being is full of turmoil.
2. 14:2
   • A man comes forth like a blossom and withers.
   • A man flees like a shadow and does not stand still.
3. 14:3
   • God opens his eyes upon such a creature.
   • The speaker asks whether God brings him into judgment with him.
4. 14:4
   • No one can bring a clean thing out of an unclean thing.
   • Not one can do this.
5. 14:5
   • A man's days are determined.
   • The number of his months is with God.
   • God has appointed a limit for him.
   • A man cannot pass beyond the limit God set.
6. 14:6
   • The speaker asks God to look away from a man so that he may cease from labor.
   • The speaker asks that the man be left until he can enjoy his day like a hired laborer.
7. 14:7
   • There is hope for a tree.
   • If a tree is cut down, it will sprout again.
   • The tree's tender shoot will not cease.
8. 14:8
   • A tree's root may grow old in the ground.
   • A tree's stump may die in the dust.
9. 14:9
   • At the scent of water the tree will bud.
   • The tree will put forth branches like a newly planted sapling.
10. 14:10
    • A man dies and is laid low.
    • A human being expires.
    • The speaker asks where the dead man is.
11. 14:11
    • Waters drain away from the sea.
    • A river becomes parched and dries up.
12. 14:12
    • A man lies down and does not rise.
    • Until the heavens are no more, the dead will not awake.
    • The dead will not be roused out of their sleep.
13. 14:13
    • The speaker wishes that God would hide him in Sheol, the realm of the dead.
    • The speaker wishes that God would conceal him until God's anger turns back.
    • The speaker wishes that God would appoint him a set time.
    • The speaker wishes that God would remember him.
14. 14:14
    • The speaker asks whether a man who dies will live again.
    • The speaker says he will wait all the days of his appointed hard service.
    • The speaker will wait until his change comes.
15. 14:15
    • God will call and the speaker will answer him.
    • God will long for the work of his own hands.
16. 14:16
    • God now counts the speaker's steps.
    • It is left open whether God does not keep watch over the speaker's sin or whether God does watch over it.
17. 14:17
    • The speaker's transgression is sealed up in a bag.
    • God plasters over the speaker's iniquity.
18. 14:18
    • A falling mountain crumbles away.
    • A rock is moved out of its place.
19. 14:19
    • Water wears away stones.
    • Torrents wash away the soil of the earth.
    • God destroys the hope of a human being.
20. 14:20
    • God overpowers a man forever and the man goes away.
    • God changes the man's face.
    • God sends the man away.
21. 14:21
    • A man's sons come to honor and he does not know it.
    • A man's sons are brought low and he does not perceive it.
22. 14:22
    • A man's flesh upon him feels pain.
    • A man's soul within him mourns.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

14:1

"Born of a woman" is a set Hebrew phrase meaning simply "a human being," used when the speaker wants to stress how frail and short-lived people are. It is not a comment on women or on birth itself.

14:2

The King James says the flower "is cut down." Nobody cuts it. The word means it dries up and withers on its own.

14:3

"Open thine eyes upon" does not mean to look kindly; in Hebrew it means to fix a close, unblinking watch on someone, the way an inspector or a prosecutor watches. The second half is courtroom language: Job repeatedly imagines his situation as a lawsuit in which God is both the one bringing the charge and the judge who hears it.

14:4

Clean and unclean are ritual categories rather than descriptions of dirt: "clean" means fit to be brought into God's presence, "unclean" means temporarily unfit. The line has the shape of a proverb, like produces like, and Job applies it to human beings generally.

14:5

The line he cannot cross means the day his life ends. Job is saying God already knows that day.

14:6

A hired worker was a day-laborer taken on for a single day and paid at sunset. He had no stake in the work and watched for the end of the day; Job uses the same picture in chapter 7. "Accomplish his day" means to put in his shift and be done with it.

14:7

A tree cut down to a stump was not necessarily dead. Olives, oaks and terebinths in that region send up new shoots from the root, so a felled tree could come back where a dead person could not. This is the comparison Job is about to turn against himself.

14:8

"Stock" is old English for the stump left after a tree is felled, and "wax old" means grow old. Many Mediterranean trees, olives especially, resprout from a stump long after they look dead.

14:9

"The scent of water" imagines the dry stump smelling rain on its way and responding. In a climate where everything waited months for the wet season, a dead-looking stump greening up after the first rains was a familiar sight.

14:10

"Give up the ghost" was ordinary English in 1611 for dying: "ghost" then meant breath or life-spirit, not an apparition. The whole phrase simply means he breathes his last.

14:11

"Flood" here means a river, not a deluge, and "decayeth" means dwindles or drains away. Many rivers in this part of the world run only seasonally and leave a dry bed in summer.

14:12

The sky was spoken of as the most permanent thing in existence, so "till the heavens be no more" functioned as a way of saying "never", the same force as "not while the world lasts."

14:13

"The grave" translates Sheol, the shadowy place beneath the earth where the dead were pictured as gathered, everyone alike, not a place of reward or punishment. Job is asking to be filed away there temporarily, out of reach, and then recalled.

14:14

"My appointed time" translates a word used for a soldier's tour of duty or a term of forced labor: a fixed stretch that must be served out. "My change" is the matching word for the relief that arrives when the shift ends and someone takes your place.

14:15

"The work of thine hands" means Job himself. He pictures God shaping a person the way a potter shapes clay by hand.

14:16

The Hebrew can be taken two ways, and translators split over it. Read one way it continues the hope of the previous verse (then you would count my steps, but would not keep track of my sin); read the other it snaps back to complaint (as things stand, you count my steps and watch my sin). The plain rendering takes the second; both are defensible.

14:17

Valuables, tallies and legal documents were tied in a pouch and closed with a stamped clay seal so that nothing could be removed or altered. The image is of Job's offenses filed away intact and kept, nothing lost, nothing forgotten.

14:18

In 1611 English "his" was the possessive for things as well as people, because the word "its" was barely in use yet. "The rock is removed out of his place" means out of its place. The same thing happens at verse 7, where "the tender branch thereof" means the tree's own new shoots.

14:20

"Changest his countenance" refers to the face altering in death. "Sendest him away" uses the ordinary word for dismissing someone from your presence, as a master dismisses a servant.

14:21

A man's name and standing carried on through his sons, so whether they rose in the community's esteem or lost everything was the thing he would most want to know. "Brought low" means dropping in status and wealth, not being humbled in character.

14:22

"Soul" translates nephesh, which in Hebrew means the whole living self (the person, their life and appetite), not a separate part that survives the body. What exactly the verse pictures is disputed: either the body in the grave still somehow feeling its own decay, or a dying man narrowed down to nothing but his own pain.