earth, and the stock thereof die in the ground; 9. Yet through the scent of water it will bud, and bring forth boughs like a plant. 10. But man dieth, and wasteth away; yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? 11. As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up; 12. So man lieth down, and riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep. 13. Oh that thou wouldest hide me in the grave, that thou wouldest keep me secret until thy wrath be past, that thou wouldest appoint me a set time, and remember me! 14. If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come. 15. Thou shalt call; and I will answer thee: thou wilt have a desire to the work of thy hands.
We have seen what Job has to say concerning life, let us now see what he has to say concerning death, which his thoughts were very much conversant with, now that he was sick and sore. It is not unseasonable, when we are in health, to think of dying; but it is an inexcusable incogitancy, if, when we are already taken into the custody of death's messengers, we look upon it as a thing at a distance. Job had already showed that death will come, and that its hour is already fixed. Now here he shows,
1. That death is a removal for ever out of this world. This he had spoken of before, (ch. vii. 9, 10.) and now he mentions it again: for though it be a truth that needs not be proved, yet it needs to be much considered, that it may be duly improved.
1. A man cut down by death, will not revive again, as a tree cut down will. What hope there is of a tree, he shows very elegantly, v. 7··9. If the body of the tree be cut down, and only the stem or stump left in the ground, though it seem dead and dry, yet it will shoot out young boughs again, as if it were but newly planted. The moisture of the earth and the rain of heaven are, as it were, scented and perceived by the stump of a tree, and they have an influence upon it to revive it: but the dead body of a man would not perceive them, nor be in the least affected by them. In Nebuchadnezzar's dream, when his being deprived of the use of his reason was signified by the cutting down of a tree, his return to it again was signified by the leaving of the stump in the earth, with a band of iron and brass, to be wet with the dew of heaven. Dan. iv. 15. But man has no such prospect of a return to life. The vegetable life is a cheap and easy thing, the scent of water will recover it; the animal life, in some insects and fowls, is so, the heat of the sun retrieves it; but the rational soul, when once retired, is too great, too noble, a thing to be recalled by any of the powers of nature; it is out of the reach of sun or rain, and cannot be restored but by the immediate operations of Omnipotence itself; for, (v. 10.) Man dieth and wasteth away; yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? Two words are here used for man. Geber, a mighty man, though mighty, dies; Adam, a man of the earth, because earthy, gives up the ghost. Note, Man is a dying creature; he is here described by what occurs, (1.) Before death; he wastes away, he is continually wasting, dying daily, spending upon the quick stock of life; sickness and old age are wasting things to the flesh, the strength, the beauty. (2.) In death; he gives up the ghost, the soul leaves the body, and returns to God who gave it, the Father of spirits. (3.) After death; Where is he? He is not where he was, his place knows him no more; but, Is he nowhere? So some read it. Yes, he is somewhere; and it is a very awful consideration to think where they are that have given up the ghost, and where we shall be, when we give it up. It is gone to the world of spirits, gone into eternity, gone to return no more to this world.
2. A man laid down in the grave will not rise up again, v. 11, 12. Every night, we lie down to sleep, and in the morning, we awake and rise again; but, at death, we must lie down in the grave, not to awake or rise again to such a world, such a state, as we are now in, never to awake or arise until the heavens, the faithful measures of time, shall be no more, and, consequently, time itself shall come to an end, and be swallowed up in eternity; so that the life of man may fitly be compared to the waters of a land-flood, which spread far and make a great show, but they are shallow, and, when they are cut off from the sea or river, the swelling and overflowing of which was the cause of them, they soon decay and dry up, and their place knows them no more. The waters of life are soon exhaled, and disappear; the body, like some of those waters, sinks and soaks into the earth, and is buried there; the soul, like others of them, is drawn upward, to mingle with the waters above the firmament. The learned Sir Richard Blackmore makes this also to be a dissimilitude; if the waters decay and be dried up in the summer, yet they will return again in the winter; but it is not so with the life of man. Take part of his paraphrase in his own words:
A flowing river, or a standing lake,
May their dry banks and naked shores forsake;
Their waters may exhale and upward move,
Their channel leave to roll in clouds above;
But the returning winter will restore
What in the summer they had lost before:
But if, O man, thy vital streams desert
Their purple channels, and defraud the heart,
With fresh recruits they ne'er will be supply'd,
Nor feel their leaping life's returning tide.
II. That yet there will be a return of man to life again in another world, at the end of time, when the heavens are no more. Then they shall awake, and be raised out of their sleep. The resurrection of the dead was, doubtless, an article of Job's creed, as appears, ch. xix. 26. and to that, it should seem, he has an eye here; where, in the belief of that, we have three things:
1. An humble petition for a hiding-place in the grave, v. 13. It was not only in a passionate weariness of this life, that he wished to die, but in a pious assurance of a better life, to which, at length, he should arise. O that thou wouldest hide me in the grave! The grave is not only a resting-place, but a hiding-place, to the people of God. God has the key of the grave, to let in now, and to let out at the resurrection. He hides men in the grave, as we hide our treasure in a place of secrecy and safety; and he who hides will find, and nothing shall be lost. "O that thou wouldest hide me, not only from the storms and troubles of this life, but for the bliss and glory of a better life; let me lie in the grave, reserved for immortality, in secret from all the world, but not from thee, not from those eyes which saw my substance when first curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth," Ps. cxxxix. 15, 16. There let me lie, (1.) Until thy wrath be past. As long as the bodies of the saints lie in the grave, so long there are some remains of that wrath which they were by nature children of, so long they are under some of the effects of sin; but when the body is raised, it is wholly past; death, the last enemy, will then be totally destroyed. (2.) Until the set time comes for my being remembered, as Noah was remembered in the ark, (Gen. viii. 1.) where
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