Job includes thoughts on death and the grave in most of his speeches, giving us insight into his perspective on dying, beliefs surrounding death, and what happens after death. These thoughts range from a desire to be relieved of his suffering through death to statements that describe the resurrection on the last day.
Job’s first answer (chapter 3) begins with a wish that he had never been born, or that he at least would have died in infancy. The logic is that if he had not been born, he would not have suffered such tremendous affliction. He ends chapter 3 with a statement indicating that he would desire death due to the horrific circumstances of his present suffering. While this view registers as quite extreme to most of us, it is not as uncommon as we might expect: Jeremiah expressed similar despair (Jeremiah 20), and many people even today will express similar sentiments when faced with acute and profound suffering like Job was. At a very basic level, we can say that Job’s expression was honest.
Perhaps we should make a note here before continuing. Was Job suicidal? Although he looked for relief from his sufferings in such a desperate way that death was appealing to him, he never indicates an intention to take his own life. Faithful to the teaching that was given to Adam and reiterated to Noah, Job appears to have understood that it is sinful to take human life, even one’s own life, because man was created in the image of God. There is a difference in longing to die versus actively causing death and taking one’s own life. Job appears to have been on the right side of this difference.
Job described the grave this way: “There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest. There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor. The small and great are there; and the servant is free from his master.” The aspect of death that appealed to Job here is rest from labor and affliction. In this first passage, he does not express any hope of blessing, of fellowship with God, or of a resurrection of his body. The only explicitly stated appeal of death is that the pain of his present suffering would cease. While this is true, it falls far short of the magnificent comfort that the New Testament gives. Consider, for example, II Corinthians 5:8: “We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and present with the Lord.” Here, the idea is not simply a cessation of mortal ailments but instead an expectation of unimpeded fellowship with God. In his chapter 3 answer, such a hopeful expectation is notably missing.
All is not missing, however, in this first statement. Job fittingly describes death as a rest, which is a common theme throughout the Bible. Jesus Himself described the deceased Lazarus as one who slept in John 11 and clarified the language when His disciples responded with confusion. Paul referred to the deceased saints in I Thessalonians as those who “sleep in Jesus.” Revelation 14:13 pronounces blessedness on the “dead which die in the Lord” because “they may rest from their labours.” This language does indeed support Job’s claim that death represents a liberation from toilsome labor and the difficulties which trouble us in this life.
On the other hand, death is the ultimate and greatest enemy. It is the last enemy that will be put under Jesus’s feet (I Corinthians 15:26). Death is the horrible penalty of sin and is not desirable in the slightest. When Paul says, “to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21), the end that he desires is to be with Christ. Death itself is not the desirable end.
We will attempt to bring these thoughts back to Job’s statement in chapter 3 and find that while it is honest and at least partially true in its depiction of death, it is missing the gospel perspective that is really necessary to qualify such an extreme statement of desire of death. To say that he wishes he had never been born betrays that fact that he must have forgotten all of the blessings and providences of God throughout his life up to this point. God’s promise to His people is that His grace is sufficient for them, and we should always maintain a sense of gratitude and zeal to magnify God for as long as we are on earth. No situation is so dire as to justify the absence of these motives.
Our next passage to consider is Job 14:12-16: “…Man lieth down, and riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep. O that thou wouldest keep me secret, until thy wrath be past, that thou wouldest appoint me a set time, and remember me! If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come. Thou shalt call, and I will answer thee: thou wilt have a desire to the work of thine hands.”
Some themes from Job’s first complaint in chapter 3 remain, namely that he still refers to death in terms of sleep and he still desires it. However, there is a greater patience and a fascinating rationality that Job has developed over the conversation which is summed up in the phrase, “Thou wilt have a desire to the work of thine hands.”
If a man die, shall he live again? Scripturally, the answer is that man will live again in the resurrection on the last day. Job is correct that while the heavens remain, physical death is permanent. We, enjoying the luxury of the rest of the canon of scripture, can declare that there is a single last day in which Jesus will come in the clouds, raise the dead, make a final judgment of the righteous and the wicked, and provide a new heaven and new earth. The heaven and earth we now inhabit will no longer exist (Bible language is “melt with fervent heat,” “be burned up,” “be dissolved,” and “fled away; and there was no place found for them” from II Peter 3 and Revelation 20).
Job’s approach to reach this conclusion rested on the direct revelation from God and was built on the assurance that “thou wilt have a desire to the work of thine hands.” “Thine hands” was a phrase that Job used back in Job 10:8, when Job contemplated God’s relationship as Creator to His creation. Job, speaking to God in that passage, questions whether God would allow His special creation to be corrupted into dust once more and abandoned. It is manifest from creation that the body is a special and intricate creation – we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.” The processes and systems that God created are so carefully designed and blessed with God’s favor that it defies logic to assume that the Creator who made such a body would be satisfied to leave it as dust. By the time Job gets to chapter 14 in our text, he has been given assurance that “[God] wilt have a desire to the work of thine hands.” This means that the doctrine of annihilation (that is, that humans simply cease their existence at death) cannot suit the majestic and loving Creator God. He will not – cannot – leave the bodies of His saints corrupted and reduced to meaningless dust. His work would be in vain, and none of God’s works are vain. Job has just articulated the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead as a natural consequence of creation itself.
Of course, in light of the New Testament, we can see ourselves as the work of God’s hands much beyond simple creation. Job had hinted of this aspect also in chapter 10:12, but the fulness of it is declared in the New Testament. By His own hand he purged our sins and bought us with the price of His dear blood. This purchase includes our bodies (I Corinthians 6:20). Would God forget this price and be satisfied forever without the ones He bought? No, God will certainly have a desire to the work of His hands.
The final passage we will consider in this study is found in chapter 19 and is one of the most famous texts from the book of Job. In verses 25-27, Job says, “For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me.”
This passage has a markedly different tone compared with the first two. The focus is no longer merely on rest or relief from suffering, but now on what will happen after death. This language sounds immediately familiar to those who have studied New Testament teaching, in which Jesus is clearly identified as the Redeemer and His resurrection is identified as the “firstfruits of them that slept” (I Corinthians 15:20). We believe that our bodies will also be raised in like manner, and we will spend eternity in fellowship with God. Our eyes shall behold Him.
I confess that I do not know how much clarity Job had in the events he was describing. It is true that the Old Testament prophets did not have access to the full revelation of Jesus with which we have been blessed (I Peter 1:10-12). Nevertheless, Job’s plain language is clear. He expected that his body would be destroyed and consumed at death. This is observable fact and agrees with his sentiments expressed earlier and other passages in the Old Testament wisdom literature such as Ecclesiastes 12:7. Next, he says that after this happens, he expects to see God in his flesh and with his own eyes. The passage says too much for Job to be describing anything else except a bodily resurrection.
Job left no question on whether he was referring to a bodily resurrection or only a spiritual union – In his flesh he would see God. Also importantly, death is no longer the solution as it was described in the earlier passages; the resurrection is. In the previous two passages, Job described death as a desirable state because he would have relief from suffering and what he described as God’s “wrath.” Here, however, he sees death as the inevitable consequence of the skin disease. He is expecting the skin disease to progress until it takes his very life and his body is destroyed. He could see death as the final symptom, but he could see the work of the redeemer and resurrection as the final cure.
We will bring this into the New Testament and rejoice in greater detail. Consider I Thessalonians 4:13-17, which harmonizes beautifully with Job 19: “But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”
First, the event that causes the bodies to come out of the grave will take place when the Lord descends from heaven with a shout. The bodies of the dead will be raised to life again by the power of the voice of God – the same power that created them from dust in the first place.
Second, notice how personal these texts are: Job said “mine eyes, and not another,” and Paul said “The Lord himself shall descend.” There will be no agents representing Jesus or His people one to another. There will be an intensely personal greeting. When called forth from the grave, our blessed hope and expectation is that we will see Him in person, in the flesh, with our own eyes.
Third, consider the duration of forever. “So shall we ever be with the Lord.” If our bodies lie in the grave for a finite amount of time no matter how great, the time we spend resurrected with the Lord will be an infinitely greater duration.
Job began this passage with the confident words, “I know.” I hope we can have the same confidence and our joy may be increased with the more full revelation of the truth of scripture regarding death. For the Christian, the sting of death has been removed by the redemptive work of Jesus Christ and the confidence of His resurrection.