Job 14: The Question Of The Ages

Job 14:14: "If mortals die, will they live again?"

As Job meditates on the possibility of appealing his case to God, he is struck with the vast difference between feeble human beings and the Almighty.  Beginning in verse 1, Job reflects on the brevity of life - people are "few of days and full of trouble."  We are as fleeting as a shadow or a flower.  In light of this temporary state of our existence, Job wonders why the Lord even bothers with us.  Why not just look away and let us be?  We won't be around for long.

Or will we?  Job begins musing on what he knows about mortality.  A tree can be cut down, but it is possible for even a stump to come back to life again.  Yet he has never seen the same thing happen with people.  When they die, the story is over.  They lie down and do not rise again.  Death is permanent, or so it seems.

Job longs for something more.  He desires that something come after death.  In verse 13, we read, "O 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!"  It is as if Job is hoping for a life beyond this life, a time when the dead will rise for a final interview with their Creator.

In verse 14, he asks straight out the question of the ages: "If a man dies, will he live again?"  Isn't this something that everyone has wrestled with?  Certainly the great philosophers of every epoch have probed and pondered this issue.

At this point in Job, the question is somewhat rhetorical and goes unanswered.  Job's desire for mercy and forgiveness, for a fresh start after death, is only expressed.  And Job admits that there is little evidence for such a hope.  Verses 18-22 returns to his meditation on the finality of death, a fate from which there is apparently no return.

We will have to wait until further in Job to get more of an answer to this all-important question that has stalked every generation of humankind.