5 If his days are ordered, and you have knowledge of the number of his months, having given him a fixed limit past which he may not go;
Lord, give me knowledge of my end, and of the measure of my days, so that I may see how feeble I am.
For what interest has he in his house after him, when the number of his months is ended?
Seventy weeks have been fixed for your people and your holy town, to let wrongdoing be complete and sin come to its full limit, and for the clearing away of evil-doing and the coming in of eternal righteousness: so that the vision and the word of the prophet may be stamped as true, and to put the holy oil on a most holy place.
And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia say: These things says he who is holy, he who is true, he who has the key of David, opening the door so that it may be shut by no one, and shutting it so that it may be open to no one.
And because by God's law death comes to men once, and after that they are judged;
But God said to him, You foolish one, tonight I will take your soul from you, and who then will be the owner of all the things which you have got together?
And the king will do his pleasure; he will put himself on high, lifting himself over every god, and saying things to be wondered at against the God of gods; and all will be well for him till the wrath is complete; for what has been purposed will be done.
Has not man his ordered time of trouble on the earth? and are not his days like the days of a servant working for payment?
That very night Belshazzar, the king of the Chaldaeans, was put to death.
And all the people of the earth are as nothing: he does his pleasure in the army of heaven and among the people of the earth: and no one is able to keep back his hand, or say to him, What are you doing?
If your face is veiled, they are troubled; when you take away their breath, they come to an end, and go back to the dust.
But his purpose is fixed and there is no changing it; and he gives effect to the desire of his soul. For what has been ordered for me by him will be gone through to the end: and his mind is full of such designs.
If death takes a man, will he come to life again? All the days of my trouble I would be waiting, till the time came for me to be free.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Job 14
Commentary on Job 14 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 14
Job had turned from speaking to his friends, finding it to no purpose to reason with them, and here he goes on to speak to God and himself. He had reminded his friends of their frailty and mortality (ch. 13:12); here he reminds himself of his own, and pleads it with God for some mitigation of his miseries. We have here an account,
This chapter is proper for funeral solemnities; and serious meditations on it will help us both to get good by the death of others and to get ready for our own.
Job 14:1-6
We are here led to think,
Job 14:7-15
We have seen what Job has to say concerning life; let us now see what he has to say concerning death, which his thoughts were very much conversant with, now that he was sick and sore. It is not unseasonable, when we are in health, to think of dying; but it is an inexcusable incogitancy if, when we are already taken into the custody of death's messengers, we look upon it as a thing at a distance. Job had already shown that death will come, and that its hour is already fixed. Now here he shows,
Job 14:16-22
Job here returns to his complaints; and, though he is not without hope of future bliss, he finds it very hard to get over his present grievances.