5 If his days are determined, if the number of his months is with thee, [and] thou hast appointed his bounds which he must not pass,
Make me to know, Jehovah, mine end, and the measure of my days, what it is: I shall know how frail I am.
For what pleasure should he have in his house after him, when the number of his months is cut off?
Seventy weeks are apportioned out upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to close the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make expiation for iniquity, and to bring in the righteousness of the ages, and to seal the vision and prophet, and to anoint the holy of holies.
And to the angel of the assembly in Philadelphia write: These things saith the holy, the true; he that has the key of David, he who opens and no one shall shut, and shuts and no one shall open:
And forasmuch as it is the portion of men once to die, and after this judgment;
But God said to him, Fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee; and whose shall be what thou hast prepared?
And the king shall do according to his will; and he shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every ùgod, and speak monstrous things against the ùGod of ùgods; and he shall prosper until the indignation be accomplished: for that which is determined shall be done.
Hath not man a life of labour upon earth? and are not his days like the days of a hireling?
In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain.
And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing; and he doeth according to his will in the army of the heavens, and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?
Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled; thou takest away their breath, they expire and return to their dust.
But he is in one [mind], and who can turn him? And what his soul desireth, that will he do. For he will perform [what] is appointed for me; and many such things are with him.
(If a man die, shall he live [again]?) all the days of my time of toil would I wait, till my change should come:
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.