Job 38:17

Have the gates of death been opened unto thee?

The gates of death

The allusion here is to the state which in the Hebrew is called Sheol, and in the Greek, Hades; which means the dark abode of the dead.

I. The mental darkness that enshrouds us. All the phenomena of the heavens, the earth, and the multiform operations of the Creator, referred to in this Divine address, were designed and fitted to impress Job with the necessary limitation of his knowledge, and the ignorance that encircled him on all questions; and the region of death is but one of the many points to which he is directed as an example of his ignorance. How ignorant are we of the great world of departed men! What a thick veil of mystery enfolds the whole! What questions often start within us to which we can get no satisfactory reply, either from philosophy or the Bible! I am thankful that we are left in ignorance--

1. Of the exact condition of each individual in that great and ever-growing realm. In general, the Bible tells us that the good are happy and the wicked miserable. This is enough. We would have no more light.

2. Of our exact proximity to the great realm of the departed. We would not have the day or the hour disclosed.

II. The solemn change that awaits us. “The gates” have not opened to us, but must.

1. The gates are in constant motion. No sooner are they closed to one, than another enters.

2. The gates open to all classes. There are gates to be only entered by persons of distinction.

3. The gates open only one way--into eternity.

4. The gates separate the probationary from the retributionary.

5. The gates are under supreme authority.

III. The wonderful mercy that preserves us.

1. We have always been near those gates.

2. Thousands have gone through since we began the journey of life.

3. We have often been made to feel ourselves near. In times of personal affliction; and in times of bereavement.

IV. The service christianity renders us.

1. It assures us there is life on the other side the gates.

2. It assures us there is blessedness on the other side the gates.

3. It takes away the instinctive repugnance we feel in stepping through those gates. “It delivers those who through fear of death are all their lifetime subject to bondage.” It takes the sting of death away, etc. (Homilist.)

The invisible gates

Nothing could well be conceived of as more truly sublime than the whole discourse of which the above quotation is a part. Job is convicted by the great Teacher both of ignorance and of weakness. How little did he know of the plans and workings of providence. Whithersoever he turned himself, he was surrounded with mystery. There was another state of being, too, over which clouds and darkness rested. It was a land from which no traveller had ever returned; a land of spiritual essences, and incorporeal natures alone. “Have the gates of death been opened unto thee?”

1. The metaphor suggests to us how ignorant we are of the period at which our mortal lives must terminate. Canst thou look into the secret chambers of the Almighty, and say which of the ten thousand ways of leaving this world, is the precise one thou shalt be under the necessity of taking? How often does the king of terrors take one and pass another by. The number of years we are to fill; the nature of the death we are to die; the spot where and the manner how; all are infallibly known to God; nay, were so long before we were born, or the earth itself was formed on which we dwell. From us these futurities are wisely and mercifully concealed. “Death’s thousand doors stand open” as the poet says, but through which of them we are to pass is only known unto Him who hath appointed to all flesh the bounds of their habitation.

2. The metaphor suggests to us that we are very much in the dark as to the nature of the invisible world. Canst thou clearly discern, through the opened gates, the condition of that world which lies beyond the present, the occupation of its inhabitants, the pursuits in which they are engaged, or the views they entertain? We know there is such a state. We are told it shall forever be well with the righteous, and ill with the wicked. But we are left very much in the dark as to particulars. Many curious and interesting questions naturally occur to a thinking and. Some think that from the moment the breath departs, all spiritual life and consciousness are suspended until the day of resurrection. But such a theory can easily be shown to be preposterous and untenable. All things go to prove that, as it is appointed unto all men once to die, so immediately after death cometh judgment, not the general judgment of the last day, but the particular judgment that shall pass on every individual.

3. The metaphor suggests that it becomes us to express ourselves with great caution when at any time we speak of the dead. There are two propositions of which we cannot be too confident.

(1) That they who die in the Lord are blessed.

(2) That such as die unregenerate shall be eternally miserable. But we may err widely in the application of them. We cannot know, with absolute certainty, the state of another man’s soul. God has not constituted us judges in the matter. Learn--

1. The propriety of considering our latter end.

2. The folly of rash speculations upon the nature of the invisible world. What God has taught us, it becomes us diligently to ponder; what He has thought proper to conceal, let us religiously abstain from intermeddling with.

3. To see abundant cause of thankfulness to God for the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. What, but for this, must have been our future prospects? He who lay in mortal slumber in Joseph’s tomb has come back to tell that death shall be swallowed up in victory, and that they who believe on Him shall never perish. (J. L. Adamson.)

Gates of death

This world, and that which is to come, are thus scripturally connected on the border land. David came very near them once, yet broke out “Thou liftest me up from the gates of death.” Good Hezekiah into thanksgiving, said, “I shall go to the gates of the grave, using a more material form for the same idea. These “gates of death” spoken of in Job 38:17, Psalms 107:18, and Psalms 9:13, are synonymous with the “gates of hell,” spoken of by our Lord in Matthew 16:18, meaning the gates of Hades, or the vast regions of the unseen state. They are all at the terminus of life’s pilgrimage, and the believer who has passed through the “gates of righteousness,” spoken of in Psalms 118:19, when he approaches these amazing portals, may use the triumphant language of David, “Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors.” These gates, as John says, have names written thereon. Over the first is written--

1. Mystery. One pillar seems to rest on time, and the other on eternity, opening into the unknown, where from this side the deepest shadows lie; and some say, “There is nothing beyond”; others, “With what body do they come?” others, “What are their employments, company, and conditions?” and yet others, “Do they know us there, and can they visit us there?”

2. Change is written over another. To the most it opens as a surprise. On this side men say, “A man is dead,” and on the other, “A man is born.” As they go through, the old become young, the poor rich, the despised honourable, and the little great; so that all are not on the other side what they were on this.

3. Immortality is written upon the next, clearly read by the Christian, yet to the mass of mankind in the past, traceable only in shadowy hieroglyphics.

4. Infinity is another. Here all is rudimental--our works, successes, attainments, yet suggestive of immense possibilities, awakening curiosity, and animating to activity. Our field of action is here limited by the very conditions of our existence; yet with the barriers of sense removed, we shall have unlimited ideas of space, power, employment, knowledge, and progress.

5. Reward is the title of another, which will receive us into the presence of the King, saying, “My reward is with Me, and I will give unto every man as his work shall be”; rewards according to our works, and not for them, yet all the better because through the riches of His grace; every man in his own order, yet each compensated according to his capacity. There are those who shall be great in the kingdom of heaven, and others who shall be least. (J. Waugh.)