Job 14:12

Till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep.

The sleep of death

1. Death is like sleep in its outward appearance. This likeness should remind us, when we lie down to sleep, of that death which sleep resembles. It should teach us to look upon it without dismay.

2. Sleep and death are both a refuge from the ills and cares of this life, and a rest from its labour.

3. In both the soul is conscious still. The soul never sleeps, and hence the phenomena of dreams.

4. Each is followed by an awakening. The consideration that you must shortly sleep in the dust, and you know not how soon, should constrain you to seek for the pardon of your sins, and the removal of your iniquity, ere it be too late. (G. Cole.)

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Verse 12. So man lieth down] He falls asleep in his bed of earth.

And riseth not] Men shall not, like cut down trees and plants, reproduce their like; nor shall they arise till the heavens are no more, till the earth and all its works are burnt up, and the general resurrection of human beings shall take place. Surely it would be difficult to twist this passage to the denial of the resurrection of the body. Neither can these expressions be fairly understood as implying Job’s belief in the materiality of the soul, and that the whole man sleeps from the day of his death to the morning of the resurrection. We have already seen that Job makes a distinction between the animal life and rational soul in man; and it is most certain that the doctrine of the materiality of the soul, and its sleep till the resurrection, has no place in the sacred records. There is a most beautiful passage to the same purpose, and with the same imagery, in Moschus’s epitaph on the death of Bion: –

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Idyll. iii., ver. 100.

Alas! alas! the mallows, when they die,

Or garden herbs, and sweet Anethum’s pride,

Blooming in vigour, wake again to life,

And flourish beauteous through another year:

But we, the great, the mighty, and the wise,

When once we die, unknown in earth’s dark womb

Sleep long and drear, the endless sleep of death.

J. B. B. C.

A more cold and comfortless philosophy was never invented. The next verse shows that Job did not entertain this view of the subject.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

Man lieth down, to wit, in his bed, the grave, or to sleep the sleep of death, as this phrase is used, Gen 46:30; Deu 31:6; 2Sa 7:12; 1Ki 1:21.

Riseth not, to wit, to tills life; for he speaks not here of the life to come, nor of the resurrection of the belly after death by the Divine power; of his belief whereof he giveth sufficient evidences in divers places.

Till the heavens be no more, i.e. either,

1. Never; because the heavens, though they shall be changed in their qualities, yet shall never cease to be, as to the substance of them. And therefore everlasting and unchangeable things are expressed by the duration of the heavens; of which see Psa 72:5,7,17; 89:29,36,37; Mt 5:18; 24:35. Or,

2. Not until the time of the general resurrection, and the restitution of things, when these visible heavens shall pass away, and be no more, at least in the same form and manner as now they are; of which see Psa 102:26; Luk 21:33; 2Pe 3:7,10; Re 21:1.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

12. heavens be no moreThisonly implies that Job had no hope of living again in the presentorder of the world, not that he had no hope of life again in a neworder of things. Ps 102:26proves that early under the Old Testament the dissolution of thepresent earth and heavens was expected (compare Ge8:22). Enoch before Job had implied that the “saintsshall live again” (Jdg 1:14;Heb 11:13-16). Even if, bythis phrase, Job meant “never” (Ps89:29) in his gloomier state of feelings, yet the Holy Ghosthas made him unconsciously (1Pe 1:11;1Pe 1:12) use language expressingthe truth, that the resurrection is to be preceded by the dissolutionof the heavens. In Job14:13-15 he plainly passes to brighter hopes of a world to come.

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

So man lieth down,…. Or “and”, or “but man lieth down” b; in the grave when he dies, as on a bed, and takes his rest from all his labours, toil and troubles, and lies asleep, and continues so till the resurrection morn:

and riseth not; from off his bed, or comes not out of his grave into this world, to the place where he was, and to be engaged in the affairs of life he was before, and never by his own power; and whenever he will rise, it will be by the power of God, and this not till the last day, when Christ shall appear in person to judge the world; and then the dead in Christ will rise first, at the beginning of the thousand years, and the wicked at the end of them:

till the heavens [be] no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep; for so the words are to be read, not in connection with those that go before, but with the last clauses; though the sense is much the same either way, which is, that those who are fallen asleep by death, and lie sleeping in their graves, and on their beds, these shall neither awake of themselves, nor be awaked by others, “till the heavens be no more”; that is, never, so as to awake and arise of themselves, and to this natural life, and to be concerned in the business of it; which sometimes seems to be the sense of this phrase, see Ps 89:29 Mt 5:18; or, as some render it, “till the heavens are wore out”, or “waxen old” c; as they will like a garment, and be folded up, and laid aside, as to their present use, Ps 102:26; or till they shall vanish away, and be no more, as to their present form, quality, and use, though they may exist as to substance; and when this will be the case, as it will be when the Judge shall appear, when Christ shall come a second time to judge the world; then the earth and heaven will flee away from his face, the earth and its works shall be burnt up, and the heavens shall pass away with great noise; and then, and not till then, will the dead, or those that are asleep in their graves, be awaked by the voice of the archangel, and the trump of God, and they shall be raised from their sleepy beds, awake and arise, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.

b “et vir”, Pagninus, Montanus, Beza, Schmidt; “at vir”, Cocceius. c “donec atteratur eoelum”, V. L. so some in Bar Tzemach, though disapproved of by him as ungrammatical.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

12. Riseth not Among the most ancient and universal beliefs was that of the transmigration of souls. It was man’s natural recoil from annihilation. He preferred to live in any mode, even in the grossest form of the brute, rather than that his being should be extinguished. Job is thought by some to have in view this false belief: he means rather to affirm that at death man ceases forever from this world. There is no root, shoot, bough, or form of being that can spring out of the man when once he is dead.

Till the heavens be no more “That is, never. For things unchangeable and eternal are in Scripture compared in duration to the heavens.” Such is the view of Noyes and the German commentators. The passage really has respect to the restoration of present life in this world. The law that involves man in complete and hopeless destruction shall forever prevail, or, in Job’s language, “till the heavens be no more.” Of the same heavens of which Job speaks the psalmist says, (Psa 102:26,) “they shall perish;” ( the strong Hebrew word for “perish,” used alike of men and animals.) Isaiah (Isa 51:6) also says of the heavens, “They shall vanish away like smoke,” , literally, “be rubbed to pieces,” resolved into atoms like smoke. Compare Isa 65:17; 2Pe 3:10, etc. So that, many think, this dark passage has in it the germ of hope, or at least, that it falls into the category of unconscious foreshadowings of scripture truth. It is evident there was a very ancient belief that the heavens and earth should be destroyed. Ovid speaks of such a prediction (Met. 50:256), Esse quoque in fatis reminiscitur, etc. It was a common opinion of the Stoics that the whole world would catch fire, ( Minucius Felix, 34:2,) and in its destruction “involve the very elements and the frame of the universe.” Compare Lucretius, lib. 5:97. The ancient Hindu held a similar belief. At the end of the last calpa the whole creation, nay, the host of gods themselves, will be overwhelmed in one common destruction. The sagas of the Scandinavian, and the old Runic mythology, confirm the great antiquity of this dogma, which may have had its origin in Egypt, (see PRITCHARD’S Mythology, pp. 181, 192,) or more probably in some primeval revelation. It does not appear improbable that such a tradition was in the mind of Job. If so, to say that the dead shall not be raised out of their sleep till the heavens be no more is equivalent to saying that when the heavens are no more the dead shall be raised out of their sleep. “And man that has lain down ( in death) shall certainly not rise again till the heavens be dissolved.” Septuagint.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments