Job 14:13-15
‘O, that You would hide me in the grave; that You would keep me in secret until Your wrath be past; that You would appoint me a set time, and remember me! If a man dies, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed time, I will wait — until my change comes! You shall call, and I will answer You!’ Job 14:13-15.
Amid his misery, Job longed for the grave. On the condition, however, that it be regarded as a place where he would have to remain for only a limited time.
This conception allowed Job to rise and get out of the very extremity of his despair. In the following chapters, especially in Job 19:25-27, he rises to that assurance.
The feeling forces itself upon Job’s mind, that it implies nothing less than that a man, when dead, should live again. He will not allow himself to be arrested, in his pursuit of that glorious vision. For he describes how he would wait all the period appointed to him, until his release came.
Job dwells on the joy with which he would answer the voice of his Creator calling him to His fellowship again. He longed after the work of His hands, long estranged and hidden.
Job asks: ‘If a man dies, shall he live again?’ It was a craving of his heart that gave rise to that wish. For that would comfort him, under all the present suffering. ‘All the days of my appointed time (or “warfare’) would I wait — until my change comes!’
“Warfare” is the name Job gave to the whole of this toilsome and sorrowful interval between the present and the wished-for goal. But he knows that even in the realm of the dead, this life continues in a shadowy form.
It is not destruction, but change which he awaits. Oh, that such a change awaited him! What a blessed future would it be, when it came to pass!
Then God would call to him in the depth of the realm of the dead — and Job would them answer Him from the deep. After God’s anger was spent, He would again yearn after the human work of His hands — the natural loving relationship between the Creator and His creature would again prevail.
It would then become manifest that God’s wrath is only a waning power (Isaiah 54:8). And love His true and everlasting attribute.
Job must have had a keen perception of the profound relationship between the Creator and His creature in the past. Only then would he be able to give utterance to such a wonderful expectation respecting the future!
For man would answer God from the grave, at the set time!
