Job 14:13-22, A Song of Grief II
Bill Long 1/29/05
There is a palpable change of mood in 14:13. Previous verses projected a sense of hopelessness and finality, especially in the image in 14:10-12. Waters "fail" from lakes, and rivers "waste" away. How can mortals expect a better fate?
But here is the problem for Job. It just doesn't seem to comport with fairness that nature should come back to life and humans should die. It doesn't seem right that nature's lessons of hopelessness should triumph over her contrary messages of hope.
The next section of Job 14 (13-17) gives us a lazer-like insight into the core of Job's longing. Despite the seeming finality of nature's pictures of waste and loss, Job will not stop yearning. He brings us into the inner spaces of his most intimate desires in these verses. I hope you note the almost "If Birds Fly over the Rainbow, Why, then, oh Why Can't I?" feel in 14:13-17. But then, in 14:18-22 he will return to nature, and nature will destroy the same hope so carefully nurtured in 14:13-17. Let's turn to these incredibly rich verses and try to understand the course of Job's mind, the temporary rebirth of hope and, finally, the collapse of that same hope.
14:13-17
"13 Oh that you would hide me in Sheol, that you would conceal me until your wrath is past, that you would appoint me a set time, and remember me! 14 If mortals die, will they live again? All the days of my service I would wait until my release should come. 15 You would call, and I would answer you; you would long for the work of your hands. 16 For then you would not number my steps, you would not keep watch over my sin; 17 my transgression would be sealed up in a bag, and you would cover over my iniquity."
A. Where does Job's longing in these verses come from? That is, how does it possibly emerge after what he said in vv. 10-12?
B. Read the entire passage and try to characterize Job's hope. What does he envision?
C. What if someone stopped Job in the midst of this rapturous passage and said, "Reality check, Job. It just isn't going to happen." Would you be such a person? What is the relationship between longing and reality in your life? Is the concept of reality a clear one for you?
D. Verse 13 presents an impossible thought; it has an interesting assumption; it is characterized by an intimate longing. Identify each of these.
E. The structure of Job's thought here is remarkably similar to the flight and flow of his mind in Job 3. That is, in that passage we saw his curse of his birth day first (3:1-10) before his mental flight into the imagined reverie of a time in Sheol with famous kings of the earth (3:11-23). Here we have his utter despair (14:1-12) followed by another imagined trip to Sheol where something special happens (14:13-17). Describe the nature of Job's thinking process and the character of his mind by comparing these two Scriptures.
F. Job seems to want God to put him in Sheol, which he looks at as a specially protected place (at least in these verses) until God's "wrath" is past. How does this characterization of God compare with that in Job 9:5, 13?
G. Job 14:14 says it all. It is almost identical to the question posed just four verses earlier. But his answer seems quite different. What are the differing answers Job gives to this question? What accounts for the difference?
H. Verse 15 uses the words "call and answer" that we saw in Job's lawsuit against God in 13:22. How do the call and answer here differ from the call and answer there? What is the difference between answering a complaint in law and answering a call in a covenantal relationship?
I. What would cause God to "long for" the work of God's hands?
J. What is the tone of verses 16-17? Why would these thoughts add fuel to the fire of Job's hope?
K. Is the Job of 14:13-17 an attractive figure for you? Unrealistic? Emotionally insecure? How would you characterize him?
L. The insights that Job develops here are "ahead of his time," so to speak. It is as if his inner torment and reflection on his pain has driven him to imagine some kind of "living again" after the time of pain. In your judgment has loss ever been a stimulus to your own creativity? A hindrance? What is it for Job?
14:18-22
"18 But the mountain falls and crumbles away, and the rock is removed from its place; 19 the waters wear away the stones; the torrents wash away the soil of the earth; so you destroy the hope of mortals. 20 You prevail forever against them, and they pass away; you change their countenance, and send them away. 21 Their children come to honor, and they do not know it; they are brought low, and it goes unnoticed. 22 They feel only the pain of their own bodies, and mourn only for themselves."
A. I will have fewer questions here! Nature returns to teach Job something in these verses. What is it?
B. Notice the fourfold piling up of images in vv. 18-19. What is the individual as well as the cumulative effect of the verbs used?
C. What is to account for the change in tone from 13-17?
D. The second person intimacy continues in v. 20, but it changes to the third person in vv. 21-22. Any significance of this change?
E. Verse 21 seems to be a generic reference to the fate of humans now that their hope wears away like the mountains. But do you see in verse 22 a very personal reference? That is, does Job close this most ruminative poem on the grief of the human condition with a plaintive personal comment?
F. Going back to Job 3, again, do you see any similarities or differences between Job's strategy and response in 3:24-26 (in relation to 3:1-23) and his words in 14:18-22 (in relation to 14:1-17)?
G. What is Job's feeling, and your feeling, at the end of this chapter?
Concluding Thought
We are only one-third of the way through the Book of Job and it has already taken us on an emotional journey of immense proportions. In many ways I think that what we have discovered so far lays out almost all the issues that will come in for further exploration in the next chapters. But the conversation doesn't end, and no resolution to the dilemma is in sight. We must press on with Job.
Copyright © 2004-2007 William R. Long
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