Command the Raven

Job - on Immortality
Job 14:7 [show/hide]ERROR: You have exceeded your quota of 5000 requests per day. Please contact the developer of this application if you have questions. (If you're the developer and have questions about this error message, please contact Crossway.)

For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease.

Job reasoned that a tree seems to have more hope than a man. When a tree is cut down it will sprout again and grow into another, but when man is cut down, where is he? [v 7-10].

Job expressed the idea that man gives up the ghost – his body lies down and does not rise till the heavens be no more [v 10-12].

He asked God to hide him in sheol until His wrath was past, and then set a fixed time to remember him again [v 13].

Attempts have been made to use such a passage to prove that there is no hell, that men become extinct at death, and that the soul sleeps; but nothing like this is stated here. It is only the body that lies down, sleeps and goes back to dust [Gen. 13:19 [show/hide]ERROR: You have exceeded your quota of 5000 requests per day. Please contact the developer of this application if you have questions. (If you're the developer and have questions about this error message, please contact Crossway.)
; Eccl. 3:19-21 [show/hide]ERROR: You have exceeded your quota of 5000 requests per day. Please contact the developer of this application if you have questions. (If you're the developer and have questions about this error message, please contact Crossway.)
]; the ghost or inner man leaves the body at physical death [Jas. 2:26].

The statement that man will not rise till the heavens be no more, proves that the ancients believed in a continued existence after death and that they would be raised again in due time [v 12].

Wishing that God would hide him in sheol, and keep him there in secret for a time [until His wrath was past], then appoint a set time to remember him again, is proof that Job believed in a separation of the inner man from the body, in the inner man going to sheol, and in the set time of the resurrection of the dead [v 13].

The fact that he asked the question – shall he live again? – gives evidence of faith in a future resurrection. So also the statement of waiting until his change would come is proof of his faith in the resurrection [v14].

All of this is in perfect harmony with truth as seen in notes listed under ‘Hell’ and ‘Immortality’ in Index [Dake A.R.B.].
- Dake A.R. Bible: page 425