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Context No. 742 of 4322 · Job

Context · Reflection

Job 14:1-16: in context

1“Man, who is born of a woman, is of few days, and full of trouble. 2He grows up like a flower, and is cut down. He also flees like a shadow, and doesn’t continue. 3Do you open your eyes on such a one, and bring me into judgment with you? 4Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one. 5Seeing his days are determined, the number of his months is with you, and you have appointed his bounds that he can’t pass. 6Look away from him, that he may rest, until he accomplishes, as a hireling, his day. 7“For there is hope for a tree if it is cut down, that it will sprout again, that the tender branch of it will not cease. 8Though its root grows old in the earth, and its stock dies in the ground, 9yet through the scent of water it will bud, and sprout boughs like a plant. 10But man dies, and is laid low. Yes, man gives up the spirit, and where is he? 11As the waters fail from the sea, and the river wastes and dries up, 12so man lies down and doesn’t rise. Until the heavens are no more, they will not awake, nor be roused out of their sleep. 13“Oh that you would hide me in Sheol, that you would keep me secret until your wrath is past, that you would appoint me a set time and remember me! 14If a man dies, will he live again? I would wait all the days of my warfare, until my release should come. 15You would call, and I would answer you. You would have a desire for the work of your hands. 16But now you count my steps. Don’t you watch over my sin?

This is one of Job's darkest and most beautiful speeches, a meditation on how frail a human life is. Man born of woman, he says, is of few days and full of trouble; he comes up like a flower and is cut down, he flees like a shadow and does not stay. Job cannot understand why a God so vast would even bother to keep such a fleeting creature under judgment; look away from him, he pleads, and let him rest out his hard day like a hired hand. Then he draws a comparison that aches. A tree, cut down, still has hope; at the mere scent of water it will bud and put out branches again. But a man lies down and does not rise.

And yet, in the middle of the gloom, Job cannot quite let the hope go. He begins to imagine something his own theology has no room for. Oh that you would hide me in the grave until your anger passes, he says, and set me a time, and remember me. Then he asks the question the whole book circles: if a man dies, will he live again? And he pictures it: God calling, and Job answering, God longing for the work of his own hands. Even here, with no doctrine to lean on, Job reaches toward a God who might miss what he made enough to call it back from the dust.

In the dark Job dared to imagine a God who would long for the work of his hands and call him back. Can I hope, when things are worst, that God actually wants me, enough to call me out of any grave?

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