Job 3:14

With the kings and counsellors of the earth,.... From whom he might descend, he being a person of great distinction and figure; and so, had he died, he would have been buried in the sepulchres of his

With kings and counsellors of the earth, which built desolate places for themselves; With kings ... which built desolate places for themselves - who built up for themselves what proved to be (not palaces, but) ruins!

With kings; I had then been as happy as the proudest monarchs, who after all their great achievements and enjoyments go down into their graves, where I also should have been sweetly reposed. Which built desolate places for themselves; which, to show their great wealth and power, or to leave behind them a glorious name, rebuilt ruined cities, or built new cities and palaces, and other monuments, in places where before there was mere solitude and wasteness.

Job 3:14 With kings and counsellors of the earth, which built desolate places for themselves;Ver. 14. With kings and counsellors of the earth] q.d. Those that here have been most negotious, and (as the nobles of the earth) have had greatest matters in hand, with those should I have been coupled in the grave, that congregation house of all living (πανηγυρις), as it is called, Job 30:23. That long or old home, Ecclesiastes 12:5. Heaven is called the congregation house of God’ s firstborn, Hebrews 12:23, and their house not made with hands, 2 Corinthians 5:1. But not many kings or nobles meet here, 1 Corinthians 1:26, because strait is the gate and narrow the way that leadeth to it; there must be stripping and stopping, which great men cannot frame to. It was a poor comfort to Henry VIII to be told upon his death bed, that he should now go to the place of kings. And a small commendation to Henry II, that some few hours before he died, seeing a list of their names who had conspired against him, and finding therein two of his own sons, he fell into a grievous passion, both cursing his sons, and the day wherein himself was born; and in that distemperature departed the world, which himself had so often distempered. He went indeed to his grave, and slept with his fathers; yea, he was royally interred under a stately monument, meant here, haply, by building desolate places for themselves: Absalom had erected a pillar for this purpose; and the Egyptian kings their pyramids, to perpetuate their memories. The Spanish friar was wont to say, there were but few princes in hell; for why? because there were but few in all. Confer Ezekiel 26:20. With these Job, had he died prematurely, or never seen the light, might have been fellowed: for death is the only king against whom there is no rising up, Proverbs 30:31, and the mortal since his master of the royal sceptre, mowing down the lilies of the crown as well as the grass of the field, Sceptra igonibus aequat. The unknown scepter makes equal.

(14) Desolate places—i.e., gorgeous tombs and splendid sepulchres, which, being tenanted only by the dead, are desolate; or it may mean that the places so built of old are now ruined and desolate. In the former sense it is possible that the Pyramids may here be hinted at.

Verse 14. With kings and counsellors of the earth] I believe this translation to be perfectly correct. The counsellors, יעצי yoatsey, I suppose to mean the privy council, or advisers of kings; those without whose advice kings seldom undertake wars, expeditions, &c. These mighty agitators of the world are at rest in their graves, after the lives of commotion which they have led among men: most of whom indeed have been the troublers of the peace of the globe. Which built desolate places] Who erect mausoleums, funeral monuments, sepulchral pyramids, &c., to keep their names from perishing, while their bodies are turned to corruption. I cannot think, with some learned men, that Job is here referring to those patriotic princes who employed themselves in repairing the ruins and desolations which others had occasioned. His simple idea is, that, had he died from the womb, he would have been equally at rest, neither troubling nor troubled, as those defunct kings and planners of wars and great designs are, who have nothing to keep even their names from perishing, but the monuments which they have raised to contain their corrupting flesh, mouldering bones, and dust.

14. which built desolate places] The expression seems to be that which occurs several times in Scripture, e.g. Isaiah 58:12; Isaiah 61:4; Ezekiel 36:10; Ezekiel 36:33; Malachi 1:4, and means to build up or rebuild ruins, i. e. cities or habitations desolated or abandoned, and make them again inhabited. If this be the meaning the phrase must be used in a general way to indicate the greatness of those kings and counsellors when they were alive and the renown they won. To this idea the words in Job 3:15, princes who had gold, form a parallel. The speaker wishes to indicate that instead of lying in squalor and being the contempt of the low-born race of men as he now is (ch. 30), if he had died he would have been in company of the great dead who played famous parts in life. This appears to be the general idea of the words, but the phrase “built desolate places for themselves” is too vague in such a connexion, and the words “for themselves” suggest something definite and well-known as that which they built, as does the parallel expression “who filled their houses with silver.” The Hebrew word “desolate places” has a distant resemblance in sound to the Egyptian word Pyramids, and some adopt this sense here. There may be some corruption of the Text.

With kings - Reposing as they do. This is the language of calm meditation on what would have been the consequence if he had died when he was an infant. He seems to delight to dwell on it.

b. This rest he would have shared with all grades of conscious existence, not only the most prosperous in life, but the mere excrescences of being, Job 3:14-16.14. Desolate places — ηψαεϊ.