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"Till the heavens be no more." "Thou shalt seek me in the morning."
Is it possible that He, God, "will seek"? If so, surely that means a deeper interest in
the fate of man than Job had hitherto entertained. "Till"--while it visualizes a great
stretch of time, does have a limit. What will take place when the "heavens are no more"?
Job turns his cogitations into prayer:
"Oh 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"
(14: 13).
The operative words here are not "the grave" or "wrath" but "hide me", "keep me
secret", "appoint me", "remember me". Job got no farther than "the grave"--it took the
coming of Christ and the revelation of the mystery through the apostle Paul to speak of
one's "life" being "hid with Christ in God" (Col. 3: 3); but Job could ask the Lord "to
hide" him. Job uses the word `hide' which is used later of the preserving, sheltering care
of the mother of Moses (Exod. 2: 2, 3), and of the shelter given by Rahab to the spies
(Josh. 2: 4), and the language of Job here, is given fuller meaning in Psa. 27: 5:
"For in the time of trouble He shall hide me in His pavilion; in the secret of His
tabernacle shall He hide me";
and in Psa. 31: 20:
"Thou shalt hide them in the secret of Thy presence from the pride of man: Thou shalt
keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues."
"The set time" which Job envisaged is the same word in the original as "the decree" of
Psa. 2:, the Psalm of Resurrection:
"I will declare the decree . . . . . this day have I begotten Thee" (Psa. 2: 7).
It seems to have slipped the notice of many scholars, that in all this Job has still in
memory "The hope of tree, if it be cut down", for the word "sprout again" (Job 14: 7)
and "change" (Job 14: 14) are the same in the original! If God will cause the dead stock
of a tree to "sprout again", then He may cause Job to "change", that is to live again too.
This reasoning is intensified by the following verse, namely:
"Thou shalt call, and I will answer Thee: Thou wilt have a desire to the work of Thine
hands" (Job 14: 15).
The word "desire" is rich in its implications. In its noun form it is the word translated
"silver" in Job 3: 15. The Hebrew translation `silver' is derived from a word meaning
to become "pale", even as the Greek word for silver, namely argurion is derived from the
word argos meaning `white'. The word is then used to speak of the emotions, in which
one "turns pale" with the intensity of feeling:
"My soul longeth, yea even fainteth for the courts of the Lord" (Psa. 84: 2).