Job 3:14

Desolate places] RM 'solitary piles': cp. the pyramids of Egypt, which were the royal burying-places.

15-19. In reading these verses, in spite of their great beauty, we cannot help contrasting the vague and cheerless ideas about the future state in these early days with the clearer knowledge and glorious hope of the Christian. Although believing that the soul retained its consciousness, men do not appear to have regarded death as but the beginning of a higher form of existence, in looking forward to which man learns to bear the trials of life with patience. They thought of Sheol as the dim and cheerless underworld, where the pale shades of the departed dragged on a colourless existence, dark and monotonous. Yet the gloom of Sheol is to Job a welcome refuge, where he would be at peace. How terrible must be the pain from which he would gladly escape to so wretched a home.