Job 14:1

JOB CHAPTER 14 Man's natural misery, sin, and short life, our plea with God not to disturb us by his power, but suffer us to accomplish our appointed time, Job 14:1. The other creatures decay and revive; but man, once dead, returneth not till the end of all things, Job 14:7. He wisheth to be hid in the grave, in hopes of the resurrection, Job 14:13; for that here God was strict in marking his iniquity, and prevailed against him, Job 14:16. Man's misery with respect to his children, Job 14:21,22. That is born of a woman. This expression is here used, either,

1. To intimate the cause of man's misery, that he was born of a woman, a weak creature, 1 Peter 3:7, and withal corrupt and sinful, and of that sex by which sin and calamity was brought into the world. See Job 15:14 Genesis 3:17 1 Timothy 2:13,14. Or,

2. To note the universality of the thing; every man, every mother's son, as we use to speak. Men's fathers are ofttimes unknown and uncertain, but their mothers are always definite and certain. One man was then to be born, and afterwards was born, without an earthly father, to wit, our Lord and Saviour Christ; but no man was ever born without a mother. Of few days; a short-lived creature in himself, and therefore needs no violent hand to cut him off, because he withereth so soon of his own accord. Full of trouble; and therefore a fitter object for Divine compassion, than for his fury or severity. He chiefly intendeth himself; but he expresseth it thus generally, partly to relieve himself with the thoughts of the common calamities of mankind; and partly to move God with the consideration of the frailty and misery of human nature, and consequently of his condition.