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Job_14:7-12
He begins, indeed, with a sarcastic remark upon his friends’ intense appreciation of their own wisdom, and ventures to distrust its quality, seeing that it had not led them to show manly pity and compassion for a friend in severe distress. Deriding their pretensions, he declares, somewhat proudly, that he had no need to come to them for instruction, but had at least as much knowledge of the matters in debate as they had. This is somewhat idly said; for a really wise man may and does receive much instruction from those who are not superior, or are even inferior; to himself in wisdom and knowledge. He declares that all they had said upon the wisdom and power of God, was, however true, merely trite and obvious; and then as if to prove that they could boast no superiority of view in this respect, he breaks out into a most eloquent discourse on the same subject—the power and providence of God—which is certainly not inferior to theirs in matter, while it exceeds them in freshness of sentiment and illustration, and was altogether well calculated to make them ashamed of their airs of superior intelligence. In this discourse, he with great ability takes up the very doctrine of God’s sovereignty, which Zophar had so forcibly set forth, and urged as a ground of submission, and presses it into the support of his own view, arguing that this sovereignty was shown by God’s acting from his own absolute will in the government of the world, far more than by his being bound by the conditions of merit or demerit in man, as they affirmed.
Nothing, therefore, which the friends could advance on the subject of the Divine power and greatness, could prove him guilty, or make out that he was subjected to punishment for his sins.
This is certainly one of the most masterly strokes of argument that occurs in the whole course of the discussion.
Job then assures them that God cannot be pleased at vindications of his providence and power based on erroneous doctrines. And so satisfied is he of the perfect knowledge and absolute wisdom of God, and so assured that he is not himself punished for special sins, that he desires nothing, more earnestly than that it were possible for him, as Zophar had suggested, to submit the whole question to the Divine judgment, feeling quite confident of the result. This, it will be noted by careful readers, is one of those incidental touches which occur in the course of the book, preparing our minds for the ultimate appearance of the Lord, as judge and umpire in this high controversy. This appeal, these protestations of innocence, lead Job back to the contemplation of his own miserable condition; and from this he starts into a most affecting view of the miseries of human life, and especially insists upon the shortness of it, as a reason why man should be exempted from constant and extraordinary sufferings. He adverts with deep feeling to the fact, that a man when once dead will not be suffered to live again. A tree when it is cut down will spring up again; and were this so with man, he might well bear to be afflicted. But he has no hope of a second life, and therefore he implores the Lord to grant him a trial; and he closes by earnestly expostulating with the Almighty respecting His dealings with him. With this language of mingled complaint, remonstrance, despondency, and doubt, Job closes the first series of the controversy. He is evidently in deep perplexity. He knows not what to do or what to think; but, on the whole, his language is that of one who feels that God and man are alike against him, and that he has no comforter.
The image towards the close, to which we have slightly referred in the above summary of Job’s argument, is one that never fails to arrest the attention of the reader by its exquisite beauty and most touching pathos. “There is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease…. But man dieth, and wasteth away: Yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? … Man lieth down, and riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep.”
The images drawn in poetry from nature, and applied by contrast (as here) or by comparison, are seldom pathetic; but this one is eminently so, even to tears. A passage in the mournful Elegy on Man, by Moschus, offers perhaps the nearest parallel to it—
The meanest herb we trample in the field,
Or in the garden’s nurture, when its leaf
At winter’s touch is blasted, and its place
Forgotten, soon its vernal bud renews,
And from short slumber wakes to life again.
Man wakes no more!—man, valiant, glorious, wise,
When death once chills him, sinks in sleep profound—
A long, unconscious, never-ending sleep.”—Gisborne.
One might say, at the first view, that the similarity is greater than might be expected to exist between a Scriptural and a Pagan poet. From the image they employ, and from the expressions used, both seem to say that death is a sleep from which there is no awaking. But this is not true. So much is it the reverse, that the same image is, not, as here, by contrast, but really by comparison, beautifully applicable to the actual state of the case—which is, that although a man, as a tree, be cut down, or as an herb is smitten to the ground by the cold of winter, yet he shall, as the tree or the herb, rise again to a more vigorous life. Indeed, what is this but a modification of the sublime image of the corn sown in the ground, which St. Paul employs to illustrate the very contrary doctrine of the resurrection of the dead? The question involved in this passage is, however, not so much that of the resurrection of the dead, as that of a future life in any shape. It is to be remembered that the special nature of the Book of Job, as a theological document, is that it is the only existing source, from which anything like a systematic account can be drawn of that old patriarchal religion, which the law and the gospel successively superseded. To this book, therefore, we look for a solution of the question: Whether the patriarchs had any knowledge of a life to come? as it is admitted that the only other patriarchal book, that of Genesis, affords no decisive evidence on this subject. The result of the search bas been very differently estimated—some finding very clear evidence of this belief in the book, and others seeing with equal clearness that the evidence is most conclusive for the non-existence of this belief. As we shall soon have occasion to look into the matter more fully, we shall confine ourselves to the present text. The question here then is, not whether this knowledge existed, but whether the present passage affords evidence of it. It must be admitted that the image drawn from the contrast of man’s life to that of a tree, is, as much in Job as in Moschus, adverse to the idea of a future life. But it is urged by some that the image has respect only to this present life, and that it amounts to saying—that man cannot live this mortal life on earth over again. The identity of the life which the tree leads after its revival, is in favor of this notion; for any such precise identity of being is not provided for by any doctrine of future life—not even by that of the resurrection of the body, in which an essential and important change is enforced by the imagery of vegetation which St. Paul employs. It must, therefore, on this text alone, we apprehend, be admitted in strictness, that a second life in this world was what Job intends to deny. But this leaves the question open, whether he had any idea of a desirable state of existence hereafter or anywhere. It has been forcibly urged, that so far as his argument goes, he had it not; because if, as he asserts, the hope of living again in this world would have afforded him consolation and comfort under his affliction, then surely the hope of a happier state of being than this present life, might have afforded him still greater comfort and consolation. Upon the whole, nothing seems determined from this passage, and we must see whether what follows supplies clearer evidence. The remarkable passage: “So man lieth clown, and riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep,” is regarded by some as a clear intimation, that this awakening, this raising, will then take place—that is, when the heavens are no more. Others regard it as the strongest possible declaration that this never shall take place. The heavens, or firmament, was the strongest image of duration, the idea of utmost permanence, which the Hebrews possessed, and to say, that a thing shall not take place till the heavens are no more, is as much as to say, that it never shall take place. If so, this must still be understood only in the same connection as the antecedent image; and the two passages taken together will mean the same thing—first stated in the imagery as a fact negatively, and then with stronger emphasis affirmatively—that man should not be restored to a second life on earth—never, never be restored to a second life on earth.
We incline to this view. We firmly believe, for reasons formerly advanced, Note: First Series—Tenth week—Sunday. that the doctrine of a future life, and, consequently, of the immortality of the soul, was known to the Old Testament saints, though we apprehend that it was held with a dimness and uncertainty, in comparison with which the light of the gospel is as perfect day. The question then will be asked, Why it was not produced here?—assuming that it is not. It may be answered, that the essential argument of the book, regarding the moral government of this world, would not admit of any reference to the world to come; and besides, we may add, that the dispensation was yet to come which should direct man’s chief attention to spiritual and to future sanctions, as motives of action and sufferance. There is much in this; but there is still more in the certain fact, that men’s actual speech, especially under the influence of sorrow, passion, or suffering, is usually no index to the real state of their knowledge. Many persons, with the full knowledge of what the gospel teaches, will express themselves respecting death in very much the same way that Job does—unconsciously limiting their view to this present life. We in fact hear language of corresponding import every day—language which, if literally interpreted, might satisfy us that few persons in this Christian country had any belief in the resurrection of the dead, or in the immortality of the soul. We take it, therefore, that Job, in the passion of his spirit, and in the heat of argument, was virtually led to ignore, as people are apt to do, such knowledge as he actually possessed of the life to come.