Job 14:19

14:16-22 Job's faith and hope spake, and grace appeared to revive; but depravity again prevailed. He represents God as carrying matters to extremity against him. The Lord must prevail against all who contend with him. God may send disease and pain, we may lose all comfort in those near and dear to us, every hope of earthly happiness may be destroyed, but God will receive the believer into realms of eternal happiness. But what a change awaits the prosperous unbeliever! How will he answer when God shall call him to his tribunal? The Lord is yet upon a mercy-seat, ready to be gracious. Oh that sinners would be wise, that they would consider their latter end! While man's flesh is upon him, that is, the body he is so loth to lay down, it shall have pain; and while his soul is within him, that is, the spirit he is so loth to resign, it shall mourn. Dying work is hard work; dying pangs often are sore pangs. It is folly for men to defer repentance to a death-bed, and to have that to do which is the one thing needful, when unfit to do anything.

The waters wear the stones,.... Either by continual running in them, or constant dropping upon them (p); and the excavations or hollow places they: make are never filled up again, these impressions are never effaced, nor the stones reduced to their ancient form; so man, though he may have the strength of stones, yet the waters of afflictions will gradually wear him away, and bring him to the dust of death, and where he must lie till the heavens be no more: thou washest away the things which grow out of the dust of the earth; herbs, plants, and trees, which a violent inundation of water tears up by the roots, and carries away, and they are never restored to their places any more. The word which we render "the things which grow out", the spontaneous productions of the earth, as in Leviticus 25:5.

Aben Ezra interprets of floods of water; and so Schultens, from the use of the word (q) in the Arabic language, translates it, "their effusions"; that is, the effusions of waters before mentioned, the floods and inundations of them overflow, "and wash away the dust of the earth"; not only that which is on the surface of it, the soil of it; but, as the same learned man observes, they plough and tear up the earth itself, and carry it away, and it is never repaired; so men at death are carried away as with a flood, and are no more, see Psalm 90:5; and or "so" (r). thou destroyest the hope of man, not the hope of a good man about his eternal state, and of enjoying eternal happiness; which is the gift of God's grace, which is without repentance, never revoked, called in, or taken away or destroyed; it is built upon the promise of God, who cannot lie; it is founded on the person, blood, and righteousness of Christ; and though it may be brought low, it is never lost; the hope of carnal men in an arm of flesh, in the creature and creature enjoyments, is indeed destroyed; and so is the hope of external professors of religion, that is formed on their own works of righteousness, and profession of religion; but of this Job is not speaking, but of the hope of man of living again in this world after death; for this is a reddition or application of the above similes used to illustrate this point, the irreparable state of man at death, so as that he shall never return to this life again, and

19 . The turbulent waters wear away the stones of the brook by their constant action. thou washest away , &c] Rather, the floods thereof (i. e. of the waters) do wash away the soil of the earth . and thou destroyest ] i. e. so thou destroyest. The “hope” of man which God destroys is not the specific hope of a renewed life ( Job 14:7 )—this idea is dismissed—but more general, the hope of life.

Verse 19. - The waters wear the stones . The power of the soft element of water, by continual washing or dripping, to wear away the hardest stone, has often been noticed, and is a frequent topic in poetry. Deep ravines have been worn in course of time, through broad and lofty mountain ranges by rivers, the stone yielding little by little to the action of the water, until at last a broad chasm is made. So the continual wearing action of calamity often lays low the prosperous. Thou washest away the things which grow out of the dust of the earth; rather, as in the Revised Version, the overflowings thereof wash away the dust of the earth ; i.e. "overflows of water, inundations, floods, not only make a way through rocks, but often carry off great tracts of rich soil, hurrying the alluvium down to the sea, and leaving in its place a marsh or a waste." And thou destroyest the hope of man . Even thus from time to time does God ruin and destroy the hopes of a prosperous man. Job 14:19

19. The Hebrew order is more forcible: "Stones themselves are worn away by water." things which grow out of—rather, "floods wash away the dust of the earth." There is a gradation from "mountains" to "rocks" (Job 14:18), then "stones," then last "dust of the earth"; thus the solid mountain at last disappears utterly.

The waters wear the stones - By their constant attrition they wear away even the hard rocks, and they disappear, and return no more. The sense is, that constant changes are going on in nature, and man resembles those objects which are removed to appear no more, and not the productions of the vegetable world that spring up again. It is possible that there may also be included the idea here, that the patience, constancy, firmness, and life of any man must be worn out by long continued trials, as even hard rocks would be worn away by the constant attrition of waters. Thou washest away - Margin, "Overflowest." This is literally the meaning of the Hebrew תשׁטף tı̂shâṭaph. But there is included the sense of washing away by the inundation. The things which grow out of the dust of the earth - Herder and Noyes translate this, "the floods overflow the dust of the earth," and this accords with the interpretation of Good and Rosenmuller. So Castellio renders it, and so Luther - "Tropfen flossen die Erde weg." This is probably the true sense. The Hebrew word rendered "the things which grow out" ספיח sâphı̂yach, means properly that which "is poured out" - from ספח sâphach, to pour out, to spread out - and is applied to grain produced spontaneously from kernels of the former year, without new seed. Leviticus 25:5-11; 2 Kings 19:29. See the notes at Isaiah 37:30. But here it probably means a flood - that which flows out - and which washes away the earth.

The dust of the earth - The earth or the land on the margin of streams. The sense is, that as a flood sweeps away the soil, so the hope of man was destroyed. Thou destroyest the hope of man - By death - for so the connection demands. It is the language of despondency. The tree would spring up, but man would die like a removed rock, like land washed away, like a falling mountain, and would revive no more. If Job had at times a hope of a future state, yet that hope seems at times, also, wholly to fail him, and he sinks down in utter despondency. At best, his views of the future world were dark and obscure. He seems to have had at no time clear conceptions of heaven - of the future holiness and blessedness of the righteous; but he anticipated, at best, only a residence in the world of disembodied spirits - dark, dreary, sad; - a world to which the grave was the entrance, and where the light was as darkness. With such anticipations, we are not to wonder that his mind sank into despondency; nor are we to be surprised at the expressions which he so often used, and which seem so inconsistent with the feelings which a child of God ought to cherish. In our trials let us imitate his patience, but not his despondency; let us copy his example in his better moments, and when he was full of confidence in God, and not his language of complaint, and his unhappy reflections on the government of the Most High.