Job 14:13-17

9. Job longs for an afterlife. (Job 14:13-17)

TEXT 14:13-17

13 Oh that thou wouldest hide me in Sheol,

That thou wouldest keep me secret, until thy wrath be past,

That thou wouldest appoint me a set time, and remember me!

14 If a man die, shall he live again?

All the days of my warfare would I wait,

Till my release should come.

15 Thou wouldest call, and I would answer thee:

Thou wouldest have a desire to the work of thy hands.

16 But now thou numberest my steps:

Dost thou not watch over my sin?

17 My transgression is sealed up in a bag,

And thou fastenest up mine iniquity.

COMMENT 14:13-17

Job 14:13Job passionately longs for life. If there is a positive possibility of life after death, then Job could endure the present affliction. The abode of the dead (Sheol) could be Job's hiding place. (Read Isaiah 26:20 and Amos 9:2.) Perhaps he is acknowledging a belief in life after death, or a strong desire that there might be one.

Job 14:14The LXX omits the interrogative, and makes Job deliver a positive claimhe shall live again.- The image is derived from a military figure of soldiers being relieved after strenuous serviceJob 7:1.

Job 14:15Again two views of God are struggling within Job's heart. He longs for the former days of fellowship with God, from which his present agony has cut him off. Job so deeply longs for this relationship with God (Hebrew, care, be pale, color of silver) (Genesis 31:30; Psalms 84:3; and Isaiah 29:22) that he is sick with care.

Job 14:16This verse probably continues Job 14:15, so R. S. V., but not A. V. God is graciously watching over Job's every step; then, all of a sudden, God is jealously observing every detail in his life. Job's hope is in the future; perhaps God will change His attitude toward him. The negative particle not in Job 14:16 is inserted in order to smooth out the poetic parallelism. Job has vehemently complainedJob 7:12; Job 7:19, of God's tyrannical observation, as a cosmic moral efficiency expert; now he hopes for grace rather than surveillance.[165]

[165] See D. H. Gard, J.B.L., LXXIII, 1954, pp. 137ff.

Job 14:17The imagery reflects that of accounting or recording of Job's sins.[166] He seeks to be acknowledged as righteousness. Righteousness is always a correlate of right relations in our daily experiences. Job has come as a Titan hoping to meet God as an equal. There has been no room for grace in the relationship. Job desires to meet God face to face but neither to change nor falter, nor repent.[167] Job has sought justification by seeking righteousness. Rather than seek help he would prefer to be himself with all the tortures of hell, if so it must be. Job has come before God with a radical over-self estimate of himself; and therein is his sickness unto death.-'[168]

[166] A. L. Oppenheim, Journal Near Eastern Studies, XVIII, 1959, pp. 121ff.

[167] Shelly, Prometheus Unbound, Act IV.

[168] Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling and The Sickness Unto Death (Double-day, Anchor pb., ed. 1954; also Princeton University Press, 1951, p. 114.) On the vital problem of the distance between God and man in Biblical data, neo-orthodoxy, egs. Barth-Brunner controversy, and Post-Vatican II Catholicism; but especially since the 19th century paradigm of evolution - Kant, Hegel, Marx, Freud, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, et. al., see R. Kroner, Kierkegaard or Hegel? Revue Internationale de Philosophic, 19, 1952, pp. 7-8.