If a man dies, shall he live again? All the days of my service I would wait, till my renewal should come.
Job is deep in suffering and looking straight at death. Here he asks the question every mourner asks, and in his day no clear word from God had answered it.
A question raised before the answer had come
Job raises two great questions with his friends. This is the second of them.
F. B. HoleJob put forward two questions of far-reaching importance while talking with his friends. The first — "How can a man be in the right before God?" (Job 9:2). The second — "If a man dies, shall he live again?" (Job 14:14). But no clear and conclusive answer could be given to either one... He believed there would be a resurrection. That belief was the fruit of spiritual insight combined with reason. He had no definite word from God to fall back on to settle the point.
What Job is waiting for
The second half of the verse turns on two terms. William Kelly renders them "warfare" and "exchange", which show a man serving out a hard term of duty and waiting for a swap.
William KellyAppoint me a set time, and then remember me! If a man die, shall he live? All the days of my warfare would I wait Till my exchange should come. You would call, and I would answer You: After the work of Your hands You long.
The waiting in the verse has an object. One writer ties it to what Job expects God to do with his body.
An Outline of Sound WordsHe asks the question, "If a man dies, shall he live again?" Then he can say about himself, "All the days of my service I would wait, till my renewal should come" (Job 14:14). Faith in God had given Job this wonderful knowledge: he would wait in God's secret place, for God's appointed time, until his body was changed.
Doubt or faith?
Commentators differ on the tone of the question. William Kelly hears no doubt in it at all.
William KellyIf a man dies, shall he live again? Job was the very opposite of a sceptic. He looks for his time of renewal or exchange, and does not doubt at bottom that God longs after the work of His hands. Man is surely to live again; spirit, and soul, and body, he will be renewed.
Samuel Ridout hears something more troubled underneath. Job asks to be hidden in Sheol, the place of the dead, and Ridout weighs what he assumes about God.
Samuel RidoutJob next seems to express a hope of a bright life to come — a hope that is vague, and spoiled by wrong thoughts about God. He wants to be hidden from God in Sheol until this mighty Being had changed His mind and stopped chasing His creature. Job would patiently wait till that change came. Then God would regard him; but now He only watched him with hostility! This is inexpressibly sad, for a man who knew God. But such is unbelief, even in a saint. We can catch the gleam of faith in the desire and the question.
Job's own answer, five chapters later
Job does not leave the question open. Later he ties living again to a Redeemer who is Himself alive.
H. L. RossierJob is perhaps the only one in the Old Testament who clearly asks this question about the resurrection of the body. He is also the one who answers it, through the Spirit, in Job 19:25, 27. There he speaks the wonderful words: "For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another"... The life of the Redeemer is always in the present. He lives forever.
The answer put beyond question
Job's question now has a reply he never heard. One writer answers it from the words of Jesus.
George Davison"If a man dies, shall he live again?" Job 14:14. For the answer to this question we turn to John 11:25: "Jesus said to her, 'I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.'" ... Soon the moment is coming of which we read, "when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is," 1 John 3:2.
What it demands of the living
The answer is not just information. One writer shows what it does to a life, and what people do to dodge it.
H. L. RossierWhoever believes in a resurrection of the dead must arrange his life in the light of eternity. Whoever waits for the "last Adam" will prepare himself to receive Him. But the man who has to fear a reckoning after death often behaves like the ostrich. When it is hunted and sees no escape, it hides (so they say) its head in the sand and denies that the hunter is there.
Summary
- Question. Job asks whether death is the end. No plain word from God had settled it yet, so he reasoned his way toward hope.
- Waiting. Job says he will wait through all the days of his service, until God's appointed time.
- Change. What he waits for is a changed body, not mere survival — the same person renewed in spirit, soul and body.
- Redeemer. Commentators differ on whether the question shows faith or faith clouded by wrong thoughts of God. Job answers it himself later: his Redeemer lives, and in his flesh he will see God.
- Answer. Christ's own words settle what Job could only reach for. That certainty should reorder how a person lives now.