Job 3:19

Death is described here as a rest (vv. 13-19) in which all have an equal share — the old and the young, even the unborn baby. The great and the small are alike at rest. Kings whose palaces have crumbled into ruins are here at last. So are princes who left all their vast wealth behind. All lie in deep and equal repose. The wicked cannot trouble them, and no master can demand service from his slave. Death is the great leveller of mankind. In its presence prisoners and their captors are no different.

No child of Adam or believer had ever been so afflicted as Job. And he did not yet know the end — that the Lord is very compassionate and full of tender mercy. He was in the depth of his trial, made worse by the silence of his friends. Soon they would add to it with the drawn swords of their growing suspicion. And so he asks, in the anguish of his soul, why, if this was to be his lot while living, did he not die at birth?

If the slave we are speaking of had died suddenly in his master's house instead of running away, it might have been called "a happy release." By his death his master would have lost all power to control him, and the freed slave would never again have dreaded his master's approach.

We see from these expressions that his mind turned to death as the great emancipator. Moses and Elijah show the same trend of thought and weakness. So did the disappointed Jonah, when he said, "It is better for me to die."

If only he had died, he says, he would be at rest (v. 13). In death at least, he claims, the wicked stop troubling and the weary are at rest. The prisoners are released and the slave is free from his master (vv. 17-19). But wishing is not facing facts as they are. Faith faces facts and gives God credit for doing what He knows is best. But Job's faith had become very weak.

Is there no difference between the condition of the wicked and of the righteous after death? … Scripture constantly contrasts the righteous and the wicked, and shows how unlike they are morally. That points clearly to very different futures: "The wicked is overthrown through his evildoing, but the righteous finds refuge in his death" (Proverbs 14:32). By blurring the future like this, Job shows how far his soul had drifted from the truth of God. … Job's own words refute his unbelief here: "I know that my Redeemer lives" (Job 19:25).

The full answer could only come in a dead and risen Christ. If it were not so, the Christian would be the most miserable of all men. But now He is risen, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. Fear of evil is gone forever for the one who now walks by faith.

Death is not a friend whose visit is to be wished for, but an enemy. In the light of the gospel, the hope of God's people in affliction and sorrow is not relief through death. It is the coming of the Lord.