or with princes who had gold, who filled their houses with silver.
Job has broken his long silence, and in his grief he pictures the death he wishes had taken him at birth. He names the richest men on earth as his company there — so what does their wealth buy them now, and is the grave really the rest he imagines?
The company Job imagines
Job puts himself among the highest ranks of the earth. One writer draws out what that company shares now.
Samuel RidoutDeath is here described as a rest (verses 13-19) in which all have an equal share — the old and the young, even the unborn baby. The great and the small alike are at rest. Kings whose former palaces have crumbled into ruins, and princes who have left all their vast wealth behind, are here at last in deep and equal rest. The wicked cannot trouble them, and a master cannot demand service from his slave. In the presence of death, prisoners and their captors are no different — death is the great leveller of mankind.
Gold that buys nothing
Job names these princes right after the kings who built ruins for themselves. One commentator hears bitter irony in that pairing.
William KellyHe asks why he had ever been born, if he was destined to such misery. Why was he not left instead, in his cutting words, "with kings and counsellors of the earth, who build desolate places?" Is this what the greatness of this world comes to, kings building ruins for themselves? "or with princes who had gold, who filled their houses with silver?" But gold and silver cannot redeem from sorrow or death. Was this life? Or was life the work by which the kings of Egypt sought fame — building their own tombs?
The houses they filled and left
The wealth stays behind. Writing about the resurrection body, one writer points to these same princes to show what the grave does to human dignity — and what undoes it.
A. PridhamIf corruption expresses the effect of a mortal condition, dishonour is a confession of its moral degradation. Our bodies are bodies of humiliation, and the grave is their hiding-place of shame. Human pride may refuse to admit this. Princes who had gold may try in vain to keep a shadow of their rank in the desolate houses they build for themselves. But the worm is their brother still... But if sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory.
Kelly reads Job's question the same way — the grandeur is real, and it is temporary.
William KellyWhy did he not share the quiet of the grave with earth's great ones, who spent life building monuments that decay themselves, or stuffing their houses with silver and gold they must leave behind?
What "rest" does and does not mean
Some have used Job's words here to argue that the dead stop existing. Answering one such teacher, a writer tests that claim against the word "rest" itself.
F. W. GrantMr. Roberts may say, "There (in the grave) the weary are at rest," but Job does not say "in the grave"... Mr. Roberts would give righteous and wicked alike rest in non-existence in the grave. But is this "rest"? Who rests? Can a thing that is not, rest? I think not, if words have meaning.
Another writer weighs what Job did know, and what his words about the wicked actually say.
F. B. HoleIn Job's day there was not much light about the unseen world. Yet he knew that death did not mean the end of existence. For the saint it meant rest, and freedom from the trouble caused by the wicked, such as he had suffered from the Sabeans and Chaldeans. "There the wicked cease from troubling" — they stop troubling other people, but they are not free from trouble themselves.
A believer speaking below his own faith
These are the words of a suffering man, not settled teaching. Job's own later words answer them.
Samuel RidoutJob's own words disprove his unbelief here: "I know that my Redeemer lives" (Job 19:25)... And do the full Christian statements of the letters echo Job's unbelieving laments? Think of "away from the body and at home with the Lord," or "my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better."
Commentators differ on how far to press Job's error. Ridout says Job "shows how far his soul had drifted from the truth of God." Grant is gentler: Job "was surely thinking of his own sorrows," not teaching that the dead cease to be.
Summary
- Company. Job wants to lie with kings, counsellors and rich princes. Death has already levelled them all into "deep and equal rest."
- Cost. The verse names the world's best security. The answer is blunt: "gold and silver cannot redeem from sorrow or death."
- Carried. Their houses were full of silver, but "the worm is their brother still." Nothing crosses over. Only resurrection reverses the dishonour.
- Comfort. Job's "rest" cannot mean non-existence, because "a thing that is not" cannot rest. There the wicked stop troubling others, but their own trouble does not end.
- Correction. This is grief talking, and Job himself later answers it: "I know that my Redeemer lives."