Job 14:10 Commentary and Bible Study

All Job’s innermost thoughts and fears are laid open for us. He is a man exposed by God’s word for all to see. The illustration is hard to understand given the KJV translation. Job is searching of a suitable picture to represent the despair of the human condition, but if the word ‘sea’ refers to the Mediterranean, as it usually does, then it is hard to understand how its waters could ever dry up. Some therefore understand ‘sea’ to mean here a lake. Others stick with the literal translation of sea but turn the illustration around: until the waters from the sea fail, man will never rise again from the dead. The clause in the second half of the verse is more straightforward and since the two are clearly parallel, then the idea in the first clause is more likely to be that of a lake drying up. A lake, which a shepherd relies upon to daily feed his animals, dries up and is now useless; a river which started out with much promise never reaches the sea, for its waters disappear into the river bed. So man fails and his life lasts only a short time before all comes to nothing. Death, says Job, is final and there is no returning to this world (Barnes). Man cannot come back to this world. ‘If man could come back again, life would be a different thing. If he could revisit the earth to repair the evils of a wicked life … it would be a different thing to live, and a different thing to die. But when he travels over the road of life, he treads a path which is not to be traversed again’ (Barnes). Man lies down at the end of life in the grave and does not rise again. Till the heavens be no more he will remain there. This is evidently intended to mean forever, for he is not thinking of the recreation of the heavens and earth at the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ – that is something that was revealed only later. He calls it a sleep that man is in, but it is a sleep from which he never awakes. The graves still contain the bones of the dead and nothing has happened to disturb their sleep. Walking by sight, one would never conclude that death could be defeated. Its victory is so assured, so final; never has any power been wielded by man which is capable of reversing its effect. How can the fragments of a decayed corpse be gathered together and life restored when we are not even able to put life back into a body one minute after the spirit has departed? This oppressive conclusion is just the one that God would have us reach when we reflect on the tyranny of death. Would it not be wise of man to turn to God for mercy and forgiveness when the alternative is to face such an implacable enemy?