Job 17:13 Commentary and Bible Study

Job now asks a rhetorical question based on the only possibilities that appear to be open to him. He does so to emphasise the hopeless of his situation. The only refuge that stands before him is the grave itself. How can he find any rest or relief there? Job deeply longs for a place, a home, an eternal refuge for he speaks here of the afterlife. He is not thinking of the few years he has left on earth, but of where he will go when life is over. He feels that need which is common to all mortal human beings for security, for safety and consolation, but all that he can see coming is the grave. How can death be a home to him, or darkness be a bed for him to lie down on? Can a man rest in darkness when his being is designed by God to need light? These words are full of bleakness. Can anyone bring themselves to regard corruption as a father, one who will look after them, teach them, guide them, provide for them? Can a man look on the worm, which consumes the body and destroys even the fragile remains that are buried in the earth, as if it was a tender mother who succours and speaks words of comfort, or as a sister who has family love in her heart? These impossibilities only underline the awfulness of Job’s situation in his view, for he has lost sight again of the hope that momentarily passed before his eyes in 17:9. Though he saw that there is light for some, he was unable to take hold of that light for himself.