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Job 14

Job sets human frailty before God, reaching toward hope beyond death while struggling with the loss of hope he feels.

Job addresses God about a human life that ends before its troubles seem to ease. He compares people to flowers and shadows, then asks God to give them rest within the limits he has set. A felled tree may sprout again, while a dead person does not return to life as before. Job longs for God to hide him in death and later remember him. Yet the speech closes with hope worn away, pain, and mourning.

griefdeath and what comes afterchronic pain
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1“Man, who is born of a woman, is of few days, and full of trouble.
2He grows up like a flower, and is cut down. He also flees like a shadow, and doesn’t continue.
3Do you open your eyes on such a one, and bring me into judgment with you?
4Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one.
5Seeing his days are determined, the number of his months is with you, and you have appointed his bounds that he can’t pass.
6Look away from him, that he may rest, until he accomplishes, as a hireling, his day.
7“For there is hope for a tree if it is cut down, that it will sprout again, that the tender branch of it will not cease.
8Though its root grows old in the earth, and its stock dies in the ground,
9yet through the scent of water it will bud, and sprout boughs like a plant.
10But man dies, and is laid low. Yes, man gives up the spirit, and where is he?
11As the waters fail from the sea, and the river wastes and dries up,
12so man lies down and doesn’t rise. Until the heavens are no more, they will not awake, nor be roused out of their sleep.
13“Oh that you would hide me in Sheol, that you would keep me secret until your wrath is past, that you would appoint me a set time and remember me!
14If a man dies, will he live again? I would wait all the days of my warfare, until my release should come.
15You would call, and I would answer you. You would have a desire for the work of your hands.
16But now you count my steps. Don’t you watch over my sin?
17My disobedience is sealed up in a bag. You fasten up my iniquity.
18“But the mountain falling comes to nothing. The rock is removed out of its place.
19The waters wear the stones. The torrents of it wash away the dust of the earth. So you destroy the hope of man.
20You forever prevail against him, and he departs. You change his face, and send him away.
21His sons come to honor, and he doesn’t know it. They are brought low, but he doesn’t perceive it of them.
22But his flesh on him has pain, and his soul within him mourns.”
World English BibleRead in NIV in Psalmlog →Highlighted verses are the most connected.
Key verses
Job 14:1This opening claim frames the speech: human life is brief, and trouble fills the little time it has.
Job 14:4Job places human uncleanness within his plea for relief from God's scrutiny and judgment.
Job 14:5God's rule over life's limits becomes the basis for Job's request for rest within those limits.
Where this chapter reaches

Psalm, Isaiah, and 1 Peter share Job's imagery of human life as fading vegetation, while Ecclesiastes shares his concern with death and the limits of human knowledge. Daniel shares the image of death as sleep, but speaks of an awakening that Job here questions and longs for.

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Notice

After reading the whole chapter

What difference do you notice between Job's questions about death and his longing for God to remember him?

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Which image best describes your response to life's limits: the flower, the sprouting tree, or the worn stone?

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Questions people ask about Job 14

Does Job 14 teach resurrection?

Job 14 raises the question of life after death without giving a settled account of resurrection. Job describes the dead as sleeping, then longs for God to remember and call him. These hopes remain within a lament that ends with human hope eroded and the sufferer mourning.

What does Sheol mean in Job 14:13?

Sheol refers to the realm of the dead. Job wishes God would hide him there until divine wrath has passed, then remember him at an appointed time. The verse expresses a longing for shelter even in death; it does not describe Sheol's conditions or explain how that return would happen.

What does Job 14:4 mean by a clean thing coming from an unclean thing?

Job's question assumes that human beings cannot produce purity from an unclean source. In context, it supports his plea about frail humanity facing God's judgment. The verse speaks to the depth of human uncleanness, though it does not explain how that condition passes from one generation to another.

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What the Bible says about grief →What the Bible says about death →

Cross-reference data from OpenBible.info (CC BY). Scripture from the World English Bible (public domain). Arc diagram after Chris Harrison and Christoph Römhild (2007).