Job 14:13

And that thou wouldest hide me in the grave,.... The house appointed for all living, which some understand by the "chambers" in Isaiah 26:20; The cemeteries or dormitories of the saints, where they

O that thou wouldest hide me in the grave, that thou wouldest keep me secret, until thy wrath be past, that thou wouldest appoint me a set time, and remember me!

In the grave; either, 1. In some dark vault under ground, such as good men hide themselves in times of persecution, . Lord, hide me in some hiding place from thy wrath, and all the intolerable effects of it, which are upon me; for I cannot be hid from thee, but by thee. Or, 2. In the grave, properly so called. Though I know life once lost is irrecoverable, yet I heartily desire death, rather than to continue in these torments. And if the next words and wish seem to suppose the continuance of his life, that is not strange; for he speaks like one almost distracted with his miseries, sometimes wishing one thing, sometimes another and the quite contrary, as such persons use to do. And these wishes may be understood disjunctively, I wish either that I were dead, or that God would give me life free from these torments. Or the place may be understood thus, I could wish, if it were possible, that I might lie in the grave for a time till these storms be blown over, and then be restored to a comfortable life. That thou wouldest keep me secret; in some secret and safe place, under the shadow of thy wings and favour, that I may have some support and comfort from thee. Until thy wrath be past; whilst I am oppressed with such grievous and various calamities; which he calls God’ s wrath, because they were, or seemed to be, the effects of his wrath. A set time, to wit, to my sufferings, as thou hast done to my life, . Remember me, i.e. wherein thou wilt remember me, to wit, in mercy, or so as to deliver me; for it is well known that God is frequently said to forget those whom he suffers to continue in misery, and to remember those whom he delivers out of it.

Job 14:13 O that thou wouldest hide me in the grave, that thou wouldest keep me secret, until thy wrath be past, that thou wouldest appoint me a set time, and remember me!Ver. 13. O that thou wouldest hide me in the grave] As in a sweet and safe repository ( Sepulchrum est quasi scrinium vel capsa in quam reponitur corpus), sanctuary! my soul meanwhile living and reigning with thee in heaven, expecting a glorious resurrection, and saying, How long, Lord, holy and true? The fable or fancy of Psychopannychia hath been long since hissed out, though lately revived by some libertines, that last brood of Beelzebub; our mortalists especially, who say, that the body and soul die together. But what saith the apostle, Romans 8:10? "If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness." Now that Job thus woos death, and petitions for the grave, it is manifest that he saw some good in it, and that he promised himself by it malorum ademptionem, bonorum adeptionem, freedom from evil, and fulness of good. We should learn to familiarize death to ourselves, and put the grave under the fairest and easiest apprehensions, that we hear God speaking to us, as once he did Jacob, Fear not to go down to Egypt (so down to the grave), for I will go with thee, and will surely bring thee up again, Genesis 46:3-4. Or as he did his labouring Church, Isaiah 26:20, "Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast." That thou wouldest keep me secret] In limbo Patrum, say the Papists, in parabola ovis capras suas quaerentes. Until thy wrath be past] For it is such as I can of myself neither avoid nor abide. Turn it away, therefore, or turn it into gentleness and kindness, Psalms 6:4, and be friends again, Jeremiah 2:35. Or, secrete and secure me till the resurrection, when all thy wrath will be gone from me. That thou wouldest appoint me a set time] Heb. Set me a statute; set down even what time thou pleasest, either to send me to bed, or to call me up again, so that thou wilt but be sure at last to remember me. And remember me] Job is willing to die out of the world, but not to die out of God’ s memory; to be out of sight, but not out of mind; that God should bury him in the grave, but not bury his thoughts of him; he could be content to be free among the dead, free of that company, but not as the slain that lie in the grave, whom God remembereth no more, Psalms 88:5. Job would be remembered for good, as Nehemiah prayeth, and be dealt with as Moses was, whose body, once hid in the valley of Moab, did afterwards appear glorious in mount Tabor at the transfiguration.

Verse 13. O that thou wouldest hide me in the grave] Dreadful as death is to others, I shall esteem it a high privilege; it will be to me a covert from the wind and from the tempest of this affliction and distress. Keep me secret] Hide my soul with thyself, where my enemies cannot invade my repose; or, as the poet expresses it: - "My spirit hide with saints above, My body in the tomb." Job does not appear to have the same thing in view when he entreats God to hide him in the grave; and to keep him secret, until his wrath be past. The former relates to the body; the latter to the spirit. That thou wouldest appoint me a set time] As he had spoken of the death of his body before, and the secreting of his spirit in the invisible world, he must refer here to the resurrection; for what else can be said to be an object of desire to one whose body is mingled with the dust? And remember me!] When my body has paid that debt of death which it owes to thy Divine justice, and the morning of the resurrection is come, when it may be said thy wrath, אפך appecha, "thy displeasure," against the body is past, it having suffered the sentence denounced by thyself: Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return, for in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die; then remember me-raise my body, unite my spirit to it, and receive both into thy glory for ever.

13–15. Having pursued the destiny of man through all its steps down to its lowest, its complete extinction in death, Job, with a revulsion created by the instinctive demands of the human spirit, rises to the thought that there might be another life after this one. This thought is expressed in the form of an impassioned desire. To understand these verses the Hebrew conception of death must be remembered. Death was not an end of personal existence: the dead person subsisted, he did not live. He descended into Sheol, the abode of deceased persons. His existence was a dreamy shadow of his past life. He had no communion with the living, whether men or God; comp. Job 3:12-19; Job 10:21-22, Job 14:20-22. This idea of death is not strictly the teaching of revelation, it is the popular idea from which revelation starts, and revelation on the question rather consists in exhibiting to us how the pious soul struggled with this popular conception and sought to overcome it, and how faith demanded and realized, as faith does, its demand, that the communion with God enjoyed in this life should not be interrupted in death. This was in short a demand and a faith that the state of Sheol should be overleaped, and that the believing soul should be “taken” by God in death to Himself, cf. Psalms 16:10; Psalms 49:15; Psalms 73:24. This was the solution that generally presented itself to the mind when death was contemplated. The present passage differs in two particulars. It does not exhibit such assured faith as these passages in the Psalms. The problem before the Psalmists was a much simpler one than that before Job. They were men who, when they wrote their words of faith, enjoyed God’s fellowship, and their faith protested against this fellowship being interrupted in death. But Job has lost the sense of God’s fellowship through his afflictions, which are to his mind proof of God’s estrangement from him, hence he has so to speak a double obstacle to overcome, where the Psalmists had only one, and this makes him do no more here than utter a prayer, while the Psalmists expressed a firm assurance. In the following chapters, especially ch. 19, Job also rises to assurance. In another particular this passage differs from these Psalms. It contemplates a different and much more complete solution of the problem. In both the hope of immortality has a purely religious foundation. It springs from the irrepressible longing for communion with God. The Psalmists, in the actual enjoyment of this communion, either protest against death absolutely (Psalms 16), and demand a continuance in life that this fellowship may continue—that is, they rise to the idea of true immortality; or, contemplating death as a fact, they protest against the popular conception of it, and demand that the deceased person shall not sink into Sheol, but pass across its gulf to God. Job’s conception is different from either of these, because his circumstances are different.

Oh that thou wouldest hide me in the grave; - compare the notes at Job 3:11 ff. Hebrew “in Sheol” - ב־שׁאול bı̂-she'ôl.

Fourth strophe — Job’s abiding faith in God’s deep love for his intelligent creatures illumes the regions of the dead with the hope that the time shall come when God’s wrath will “turn,” and the dead