The Grammar of Dust: If a Man Dies, Will He Live Again? Text: Job 14:1-6
Introduction: The Ache of Mortality
We come now to a passage in the book of Job that is heavy with the dust of the grave. It is a lament, a sorrowful meditation on the brevity and turmoil of human life. Job, stripped of everything, sitting on an ash heap, scraping his sores with a piece of pottery, gives voice to the universal human condition. If you have ever stood at a graveside, if you have ever felt the ache of your own finitude, if you have ever looked in the mirror and seen a stranger with graying hair looking back, then you understand the sentiment of this chapter. Job is not engaging in abstract philosophy here; he is bleeding theology.
The modern world, particularly our secular, sanitized corner of it, does everything it can to run from this reality. We have cosmetics to hide the wrinkles, retirement homes to hide the elderly, and a frantic pursuit of distraction to hide the fact that the hearse is double-parked outside for every one of us. We want to believe that man is the measure of all things, that we are the captains of our own souls, but Job rips the mask off this delusion. He forces us to confront the raw data of our existence: we are born, we suffer, and we die. And we die quickly.
But we must be careful. It is possible to read Job's lament and conclude that this is the final word. It is possible to nod along with the despair and miss the glorious counterpoint that the rest of Scripture provides, and which Job himself will later glimpse with stunning clarity. Job is asking the right questions. He is wrestling with the true problem. If a man dies, will he live again? This is the ultimate question. And the entire Christian faith is the thunderous, world-altering answer to it. But before we can appreciate the answer, we must first feel the full weight of the question. We must sit with Job in the dust and ashes and stare into the abyss of our own mortality, under the curse of sin. For it is only when we understand the grammar of dust that we can begin to comprehend the grammar of resurrection.
In these six verses, Job lays out the human predicament with brutal honesty. He describes our frailty, our impurity, and our absolute subjection to the sovereign decree of God. This is the bad news, the necessary foundation upon which the good news of the gospel is built.
The Text
"Man, who is born of woman, Is short-lived and full of turmoil. Like a flower he comes forth and withers. He also flees like a shadow and does not stand. You also open Your eyes on him And bring me into judgment with Yourself. Who can make the clean out of the unclean? No one! Since his days are determined, The number of his months is with You; And his limits You have set so that he cannot pass. Turn Your gaze from him that he may cease from toil, Until he accepts his day like a hired man."
(Job 14:1-6 LSB)
Frail Flowers and Fleeing Shadows (v. 1-2)
Job begins with a summary of the human condition, a thesis statement for our mortality.
"Man, who is born of woman, Is short-lived and full of turmoil. Like a flower he comes forth and withers. He also flees like a shadow and does not stand." (Job 14:1-2)
“Man, who is born of woman.” This is not just a biological observation. It is a theological statement. To be born of woman is to be born into the world of the fall. It is to be born under the curse pronounced in Genesis 3. It connects us to Eve, the mother of all living, and to the sorrow and travail that entered the world through sin. We are not self-generated. We are creatures, contingent, dependent, and born into a broken lineage.
And what is the character of this life? It is “short-lived and full of turmoil.” The Hebrew for “full of turmoil” can also be translated as “full of trouble” or “satiated with vexation.” This is not the optimistic humanism of the modern age. This is the Bible's unvarnished realism. Life is brief, and it is hard. This is not to say there is no joy, no beauty, no laughter. But it is to say that the background radiation of our existence is trouble. Sickness, loss, disappointment, and ultimately, death. To deny this is to live in a fantasy.
Job then gives two powerful metaphors for this brevity. First, we are like a flower. We come forth, perhaps with the beauty and vibrancy of youth, but we quickly wither. The bloom is temporary. The frost comes, the heat comes, and we are gone. Second, we are like a shadow. A shadow has no substance of its own; it is merely the blockage of light. It is transient, insubstantial, and it “does not stand.” It is constantly moving, constantly changing, until the sun sets and it vanishes completely. This is a direct assault on human pride. You think you are a monument of granite, but God says you are a dandelion puff. You think you are a permanent fixture, but God says you are a fleeting shadow.
The Gaze of Judgment (v. 3-4)
Job then turns his attention from the general condition of man to his own specific predicament under the watchful eye of a holy God.
"You also open Your eyes on him And bring me into judgment with Yourself. Who can make the clean out of the unclean? No one!" (Job 14:3-4 LSB)
Here is the terror. It is one thing to be a frail flower, but it is another thing entirely for the infinite, holy God to fix His gaze upon that flower. Job feels the intensity of God's scrutiny. "You also open Your eyes on him." For a sinful creature, the gaze of a holy God is not a comfort, but a terror. It is the gaze of a judge. Job feels he is being brought into a cosmic courtroom, a frail, withered thing, to stand trial before the Almighty. And he knows he has no case.
This leads him to the central problem of the human condition, the doctrine we call original sin. "Who can make the clean out of the unclean? No one!" Job understands that the problem is not just what he has done, but what he is. He is unclean. He was born that way. David says the same thing in Psalm 51: "Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me." We do not become sinners because we sin; we sin because we are sinners. We are born with a sin nature, a corruption that touches every part of us. We are born unclean, and we cannot make ourselves clean. You cannot get a clean stream from a polluted spring. You cannot get a clean garment by washing it in mud.
This is a devastating admission. It is the end of all self-righteousness. It is the end of all attempts to pull ourselves up by our own moral bootstraps. Job is saying, "God, you are holy, and I am not. You are clean, and I am unclean. And there is nothing, absolutely nothing, I can do to change that fact." This is the necessary despair that must precede true hope. You must first know that you cannot save yourself before you will ever cry out for a Savior.
Sovereign Limitations (v. 5)
Having established man's frailty and impurity, Job now affirms God's absolute sovereignty over man's life.
"Since his days are determined, The number of his months is with You; And his limits You have set so that he cannot pass." (Genesis 14:5 LSB)
This is a profound statement of divine sovereignty. Our lives are not a series of random accidents. The length of our life is not ultimately determined by diet, exercise, or medical technology. Our days are determined. The number of our months is with God. He has set the limits, the boundaries, and we cannot pass them. The psalmist echoes this: "Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in Your book were all written the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them" (Psalm 139:16).
For the unbeliever, this is a terrifying doctrine. It means they are not in control. It means their frantic efforts to extend their lives are ultimately futile. They are creatures, and their times are in the Creator's hands. But for the believer, this is a deep and abiding comfort. It means that not a single day of your life is wasted. It means that you cannot die one second before God's appointed time. It means that until your work is done, you are immortal. It means that pestilence, famine, and the sword are all servants of God's decree. He holds our breath in His hands. This truth doesn't eliminate the pain of loss, but it does eliminate the chaos. Our lives are not meaningless flickers; they are part of a divinely written story, and the Author knows the final chapter.
A Plea for Respite (v. 6)
Based on all this, Job concludes with a plea. It is a cry for relief, for a moment to catch his breath.
"Turn Your gaze from him that he may cease from toil, Until he accepts his day like a hired man." (Job 14:6 LSB)
Because God's gaze feels like the gaze of a judge, Job asks God to look away. "Leave me alone, let me rest." He feels like a hired man, a day laborer, who is just trying to get through his shift. The toil is relentless, the work is hard, and he just wants to reach the end of the day and receive his wages, which in this context, seems to be the simple peace of death.
He wants to "accept his day," or as some translations put it, "enjoy his day." He longs for a moment of peace before the end. This is the cry of a man at the absolute limit of his endurance. He is not cursing God, but he is pleading for a temporary ceasefire in this spiritual battle that is raging in his soul and on his body. He wants the foreman to stop watching him so closely so he can just finish his work.
The Unspoken Answer
Job lays out the problem perfectly. We are frail, we are filthy, our days are numbered, and we live under the scrutinizing gaze of a holy God. If this is the end of the story, then the atheists are right. Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. But this is not the end of the story. This is the setup for the gospel.
Job asks, "Who can make the clean out of the unclean?" And he answers, "No one!" From a human perspective, he is absolutely correct. No man can do it. But the whole point of the Bible is that God can. God can do what is impossible for man.
How does He do it? He does it by sending One who was also "born of woman," but who was not born in sin. Jesus Christ was born of a virgin, without the stain of original sin. He lived a life that was not "full of turmoil" in the sense of sin's chaos, but was full of perfect obedience. He was the one clean man in a world of the unclean.
And what did God do? He opened His eyes on Him. On the cross, the Father turned His gaze upon His Son, and He brought Him into judgment. But it was not His own judgment He bore. He bore our judgment. He who was clean was made unclean for us. He who was life itself entered into death for us. He whose days are eternal had His days cut short for us.
And because He did this, the question, "If a man dies, will he live again?" has been answered. Later in this book, Job will have a flash of brilliant, Spirit-inspired hope: "For I know that my Redeemer lives, and He shall stand at last on the earth; and after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God" (Job 19:25-26). Job's lament in chapter 14 is the dark valley he must pass through to get to the sunlit peak of chapter 19.
The answer to the frailty of the flower is the resurrection. The answer to the fleeting shadow is the eternal substance of Christ. The answer to our uncleanness is the cleansing blood of the Lamb. And the answer to the terrifying gaze of the Judge is the loving gaze of the Father, who now looks upon us and sees not our sin, but the perfect righteousness of His Son. The hired man has finished his day, and because of Christ, his wages are not death, but eternal life.