Job 18:14

No craft helps him; it only traps the man who trusts himself instead of God. His own feet send him into the net, and he walks over the meshes, not seeing what lies underneath. The trap, the snare, the cord meet him wherever he turns. Terrors alarm him on every side and follow his footsteps. His calamity, instead of being satisfied, is hungry for more. Deadly disease — death's firstborn — is already devouring parts of his skin. In short, everything that makes his tent bright, now or in the future, is torn out. He has to march off to the king of terrors.

Calamity devoured the various parts of his skin. Then "the firstborn of death" devours his limbs and leads him on to death, "the king of terrors." That phrase is a solemn and poetic description of the bodily disease that was devouring Job. Strangers live in his tent, and brimstone, the final judgment of God, rains down on his home.

His address is full of beautiful poetic imagery and true statements about the certain doom of the wicked; but it misses the mark, because it completely fails to establish any connection between Job and the wicked whose end he so vividly describes.

Bildad again takes his place in the contest. He means well, but his words are poisoned arrows. "The light of the wicked is put out." Yes, every word is perfectly true of the wicked; but how crushing to Job! Circumstances seemed to favour the charge.

He was satisfied that, whatever the appearances had been, they were all hollow, and that the truth could no longer be hidden. God's judgments and Job's words were making it plain that he had been simply a prosperous fool, with the just and usual end of that in this life... Is it not humbling and solemn that we can be completely sincere in what we believe, and completely wrong? We are just as responsible for what our convictions are as for what we do or say.

The victory of Christ has altered the whole aspect of death for His believing people. It is no longer "the king of terrors" to us. On the contrary, death is ours, as the exulting apostle tells us in 1 Corinthians 3:21-22. That is to say, it is a servant that serves for our blessing. Old Testament believers were "through fear of death subject to lifelong slavery" (Hebrews 2:15).

But God's faithful Witness, the sinless Sin-Offering, could not be held by the power of death. The great king of terrors has been made to yield to a greater than himself. Death has met its Master; it is now a crownless king, without a sceptre and without a throne.