Job 14:10

There is no hope for him for this earthly life. He dies and is done with. A plant, on the other hand, may be cut down to the worst state with nothing left showing, and yet it may shoot up again, especially if there is water to help it.

There was no mystery about the tree, but there was about the human race. Like the tree stump, the body of man wasted away in the ground. But there was no sign of life going on, as there was when young shoots sprang from the old roots of the tree. Still, Job realised that man was made of more than a body, for he spoke of his spirit, and this is what puzzled him. The body of the man wasted, but where was the man that lived in the body?

In Job 14, he does not go beyond this present world of sight, and in the bitterness of his spirit he has no sense of resurrection. The tree sprouts now, in plain view, in this present world. Man does not, and in fact never will, unless by a miracle, as with Lazarus. Death has fully passed on him as a dweller in this world — a child of Adam. He never gets that life back. Job was right, only he did not see beyond, nor did he know here Him who is the resurrection and the life.

That is the language of man apart from revelation. It is the expression of one who is in darkness and uncertainty. Teachers of errors — soul-sleep, the wiping out of the wicked, and so on — often quote Job and the words of these friends to defend their false teachings. They treat them as if they were true revelations from God. But their words are only the expressions of the human mind, and often false and misleading. Scripture gives an unfailing inspired record of what Job and his friends said, but revelation is a different matter altogether.

The Lord answered Job's hard question in Luke 16:19–31 and Luke 23:43, and Paul answered it through the Spirit in 2 Corinthians 5:1–8 and Philippians 1:23. For the believer, death means entry into Christ's presence in the heavenly paradise. For the unbeliever, it means entry into hell with all its torments.

Justified and right with God as he was, he has died. That raises another question about him, and we read it in Job 14:10. We may well echo that second question, for we are not left in any doubt about the answer. For this we turn to 2 Corinthians 5:8: "Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord." That is where our brother is, WITH THE LORD.

Yet here is the fact. Man's body decays completely in the grave, but the fresh sprouting of a tree is a comparison, not a contrast, to the "sprouting" of a new body from the old in the end. Man's resurrection takes longer to come, but it is just as certain. Job knew this, as he says in chapter 19:26. In chapter 14, though, he is too taken up with the near future to give proper weight to the distant future.

Job had the resurrection of the just before him (Job 19:25-27), and no less the resurrection of the unjust (Job 14:10-12). The first is tied to the Kinsman Redeemer standing up on the last day on this earth of dust. The second is tied to a day when even the heavens are no more.