I WILL WAIT FOR MY RENEWAL TO COME

Job 14:1-22 / Keywords 14:14

If a man dies, will he live again? All the days of my hard service I will wait for my renewal to come.

 

14:1 “Mortals, born of woman,

    are of few days and full of trouble.

2 They spring up like flowers and wither away;

    like fleeting shadows, they do not endure.

3 Do you fix your eye on them?

    Will you bring them[a] before you for judgment?

4 Who can bring what is pure from the impure?

    No one!

5 A person’s days are determined;

    you have decreed the number of his months

    and have set limits he cannot exceed.

6 So look away from him and let him alone,

    till he has put in his time like a hired laborer.

7 “At least there is hope for a tree:

    If it is cut down, it will sprout again,

    and its new shoots will not fail.

8 Its roots may grow old in the ground

    and its stump die in the soil,

9 yet at the scent of water it will bud

    and put forth shoots like a plant.

10 But a man dies and is laid low;

    he breathes his last and is no more.

11 As the water of a lake dries up

    or a riverbed becomes parched and dry,

12 so he lies down and does not rise;

    till the heavens are no more, people will not awake

    or be roused from their sleep.

13 “If only you would hide me in the grave

    and conceal me till your anger has passed!

If only you would set me a time

    and then remember me!

14 If someone dies, will they live again?

    All the days of my hard service

    I will wait for my renewal[b] to come.

15 You will call and I will answer you;

    you will long for the creature your hands have made.

16 Surely then you will count my steps

    but not keep track of my sin.

17 My offenses will be sealed up in a bag;

    you will cover over my sin.

18 “But as a mountain erodes and crumbles

    and as a rock is moved from its place,

19 as water wears away stones

    and torrents wash away the soil,

    so you destroy a person’s hope.

20 You overpower them once for all, and they are gone;

    you change their countenance and send them away.

21 If their children are honored, they do not know it;

    if their offspring are brought low, they do not see it.

22 They feel but the pain of their own bodies

    and mourn only for themselves.”

Footnotes

a. Job 14:3 Septuagint, Vulgate and Syriac; Hebrew me

b. Job 14:14 Or release

1. No longer content to talk about God with his friends, Job addresses God directly (13:20), pouring out his bitterness, frustration, and pain. This becomes the opportunity to drop pretense.

 

2. Reflecting on human mortality, Job likens people with flowers that do not endure (2). Job envies the flowers: God doesn’t bring them to judgment! If only God would look away from people and leave them alone, like the flowers! Job also envies the trees, who have hope because they continue to sprout, year after year, but people die and are no more.

 

3. Job even envies the grave, where he might be free from God’s anger. His rhetorical question: “If someone dies, will they live again?” allows him a moment to long for such renewal, where God would answer, and not hold sins against him. But since no one who dies lives again, Job’s hope is destroyed (19), leaving only pain and mourning (22).

 

4. In Jesus we are given a different answer to Job’s question. Yes, there is One who has died and lives again (Mark 16:6)! Rather than judgment, his death brings forgiveness, and his resurrection gives us living hope. We need not envy flowers, trees, or the grave, but rather embrace this living hope.

 

Prayer Father, thank you for giving us the answer to Job’s question in Jesus. Help me today to press into this living hope, awaiting renewal.

One Word Jesus is Risen, our Living Hope