Job

Chapter 14

Job Laments the Finality of Death

Job reflects on how brief and troubled human life is, asking why God watches so closely over a creature already fading like a flower and shadow. He contrasts a tree that may sprout again with a person who dies and does not return, briefly imagines being hidden away until wrath passes, and then lets that fragile hope give way to the steady erosion, separation, and grief that seem to mark the human end.

This chapter continues Job's address to God by widening the frame from his own lawsuit to the condition of human life itself. The legal protest of the previous chapter settles here into mortality's larger sadness, where even hope appears only as a question before slipping back under the weight of death.

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Job 14

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vv. 1-22

Job Laments the Finality of Death

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“¹Man, who is born of woman, ²Like a flower, he comes forth, then withers away; ³Do You open Your eyes to one like this? ⁴Who can bring out clean from unclean? ⁵Since his days are determined ⁶look away from him and let him rest,

⁷For there is hope for a tree: ⁸If its roots grow old in the ground ⁹at the scent of water it will bud ¹⁰But a man dies and is laid low; ¹¹As water disappears from the sea ¹²so a man lies down

¹³If only You would hide me in Sheol ¹⁴When a man dies, will he live again? ¹⁵You will call, and I will answer; ¹⁶For then You would count my steps, ¹⁷My transgression would be sealed in a bag,

¹⁸But as a mountain erodes and crumbles ¹⁹as water wears away the stones ²⁰You forever overpower him, and he passes on; ²¹If his sons receive honor, he does not know it; ²²He feels only the pain of his own body

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01vv. 1-22Job Laments the Finality of DeathJob describes human life as short, troubled, and unable to produce purity from uncleanness, so he asks God to look away from a creature whose days are already fixed. He then contrasts the renewable life of a tree with the apparent finality of human death, imagines being hidden in Sheol until God remembers him, and finally returns to the hard reality that people are worn down, overtaken, and cut off from knowing what becomes of those they leave behind.