Job 14:2 Commentary and Bible Study

Though it may be something of great beauty, a flower soon fades. Why does God put so much skill into what passes away so soon? Is it not a waste? Would we work so hard to make something that lasted only a few days? Wouldn’t we want it to remain if we had put so much effort into designing something so delicate and elegant? But the flower of the field does not last, and it is made an object lesson for man. Man has never achieved such artistic design, such integration and such multi-faceted perfection as is found in the simplest flower. Nevertheless God has made it something that is affected by the fall and which soon turns to corruption. What skill there is even in that! He does nothing by accident and there is always a lesson in the way he works. The flower exists in a fallen world and therefore is under the curse and man must see its beauty fade like all else around him; but the flower has a beauty that could only come from God and shows he has been at work. Christ points to one such lesson which faith can learn, faith which Job is not currently exercising. God pours such skill into the creation of a single flower, and yet he is ready to see it cast into the fire. The believer realizes that the rapid fading of the flower is due not to any weakness on God’s part, but to his desire to teach us and to put together two apparently contradictory facts and come out with a lesson of deep significance. Man is far greater than a flower, and is created with far more wonderful features, yet he too seems to be under the same corrupting influence. That is how sight sees the matter, but the Lord urges us to see these things through the eyes of faith. What is a flower compared to a child of God? If God lavishes so much attention on what he knows is destined for the oven, will he fail to do the simple task of supplying his children with clothing for the body while they are on earth? They have an eternal future ahead of them in heaven, and they are on earth only for a time, but God’s fatherly care will not let them suffer needlessly on earth (Matthew 6:28-30).Job’s words though full of pathos are not full of faith. Man will only be seen as like the fading flower if he is indistinguishable from anything else that God has made, if his existence ends in the grave, if God makes no promises to him of a life in the world to come. This is how the natural man sees his future, using only sight and without the benefit of God’s revelation. God sets this gloomy prospect before the eyes of the natural man in order to shut impress on him his mortality and crush all hope. This dismal scene prepares us for a salvation that only God can provide. But Job possessed part of God’s revelation for even the first promise gave hope of victory over death. Yet in his gloom he sees only man’s frailty and not the glory that awaits the children of God. Man is like a shadow, a thing that has no solid existence but is gone in a moment: the shadow of a man’s figure as he passes by, the shadow of a bird as it flies overhead. When it is gone, there is no trace of it. When man is gone, how long is he remembered? How many names of those who went before us can we remember, even when they lived in places which we suppose ourselves to be most familiar with? His fleeting existence is in contrast to the eternal significance which his soul cries out for, which is mocked by death.