Job 14:11 kjv
As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up:
Job 14:11 nkjv
As water disappears from the sea, And a river becomes parched and dries up,
Job 14:11 niv
As the water of a lake dries up or a riverbed becomes parched and dry,
Job 14:11 esv
As waters fail from a lake and a river wastes away and dries up,
Job 14:11 nlt
As water evaporates from a lake
and a river disappears in drought,
Job 14 11 Cross References
| Verse | Text | Reference |
|---|---|---|
| Gen 3:19 | By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return. | Man's return to dust is decreed. |
| Ps 90:3 | You return man to dust and say, "Return, O children of man!" | God's power over human mortality. |
| Ps 103:15-16 | As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more. | Transience of human life compared to nature. |
| Ps 104:29 | When you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust. | Human spirit departs, body returns to dust. |
| Eccl 9:5 | For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten. | Sheol and the apparent lack of knowledge for the dead. |
| Isa 26:14 | The dead will not live; the departed will not rise; because You have punished and destroyed them, and You have made all their memory perish. | Reinforces the common view of no resurrection in some contexts. |
| Isa 26:19 | Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For Your dew is a dew of light, and the earth will give birth to the dead. | Future hope of resurrection from a prophet. |
| Eze 37:1-14 | The valley of dry bones, illustrating God's power to bring life to the dead. | God's power of resurrection. |
| Dan 12:2 | And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. | Explicit Old Testament prophecy of resurrection. |
| Jon 2:6 | To the roots of the mountains I sank; the earth with its bars closed over me forever; yet You brought up my life from the pit, O LORD my God. | Experience of near-death, illustrating God's power to restore. |
| 1 Sam 2:6 | The LORD kills and brings to life; He brings down to Sheol and raises up. | God's sovereign power over life and death. |
| Psa 30:3 | O LORD, You have brought up my soul from Sheol; You have kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit. | Deliverance from the brink of death. |
| John 11:25-26 | Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in Me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?" | Jesus's power as resurrection and life. |
| Acts 24:15 | Having a hope in God, which these men themselves accept, that there will be a resurrection of both the just and the unjust. | New Testament affirmation of universal resurrection. |
| 1 Cor 15:20-22 | But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. | Christ's resurrection as guarantee for believers. |
| 1 Cor 15:42-44 | So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. | Description of the resurrected body. |
| 1 Thess 4:13-18 | But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. | Comfort and hope for those grieving in Christ. |
| Heb 9:27 | And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment. | Universality of death for all humanity. |
| Rev 20:13 | And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them according to what they had done. | The ultimate resurrection for judgment. |
| Isa 19:5-6 | And the waters of the Nile will be dried up, and the river will be parched and dry; and the canals will stink... | Imagery of significant water sources drying up. |
| Jer 14:3 | Her nobles send their servants for water; they come to the cisterns; they find no water; they return with their vessels empty... | Lack of water leading to desolation. |
| Psa 74:15 | You split open springs and torrents; You dried up ever-flowing streams. | God's power to dry up powerful waters. |
Job 14 verses
Job 14 11 Meaning
Job 14:11 conveys Job's profound despair and perception of human mortality as a permanent and irreversible state. He uses two striking analogies from the natural world – the drying up of waters from a sea and the decay and disappearance of a river – to illustrate that just as these vast water sources can vanish completely, so too does a human being disappear permanently upon death, without the possibility of returning to their former life on earth. This statement contrasts humanity's fate with the cyclical renewal seen in nature, particularly referencing the hope of a cut tree in previous verses (Job 14:7-10).
Job 14 11 Context
Job 14 falls within Job's prolonged response to his friends' accusations and comfortless advice. In this chapter, Job laments the brevity and difficulty of human life, contrasting it sharply with the resilience of a cut tree, which can sprout again (Job 14:7-9). While a tree, if its root remains in the earth, has a hope of renewed life after being cut down, humanity, once dead, is utterly gone. Verse 11 powerfully emphasizes this point by presenting seemingly impossible natural occurrences—a sea drying up, a river decaying—to underscore the perceived finality and irreversibility of human death, which Job sees as far more certain than even the most cataclysmic natural disasters. His words reflect the common ancient Near Eastern understanding of Sheol as a shadowy realm from which there was no return to earthly life, a state of separation from the land of the living, albeit not necessarily a total annihilation of the soul, but an end to its active participation in the world. Job, at this point, expresses deep despondency, lacking a clear revelation of the future bodily resurrection that would later become more prominent in biblical understanding, especially in the New Testament.
Job 14 11 Word analysis
- As (וַ - va): A conjunction, here acting as a comparative, setting up the analogy between the vanishing water and human departure.
- waters (מַיִם - mayim): Hebrew for "water." Often used broadly for any large body of water. Represents a source of life and abundance. Here, its failure emphasizes the utter reversal of nature's life-giving processes.
- fail (דָּלָל - dalal): From the root dalal, meaning to languish, become faint, be emptied, to hang low, drain away. This verb implies a gradual but decisive loss or emptying.
- from (מִן - min): Preposition meaning "from" or "out of."
- the sea (יָם - yam): Hebrew for "sea," "ocean," or sometimes a large river or lake. Symbolizes immensity, power, and often, an unchanging nature. Job's use here highlights the extraordinary extent of his analogy: if even a seemingly eternal sea can fail, how much more so frail humanity?
- and the (וְ - ve): Conjunction "and."
- river (נָהָר - nahar): Hebrew for "river." Rivers, like seas, represent life-sustaining, flowing water. Their cessation implies ultimate desolation.
- decayeth (יֶחֱרַב - yekherab): From the root charab, meaning to dry up, be desolate, be laid waste. It conveys the idea of complete ruin, barrenness, or destruction through desiccation.
- and drieth up (וְיָבֵשׁ - veyabesh): From the root yabesh, meaning to dry up, wither, become dry. This term is used for plants, land, and water. It intensifies the image of the water vanishing, moving from mere 'decay' to total 'dryness'.
Words-group analysis:
- "As waters fail from the sea": This phrase sets a vivid, hyperbole-laden scene. The idea of the vast, immense "sea" literally failing (languishing, draining away) underscores the severity of Job's analogy. It’s an inversion of the natural order, suggesting something so profound it seems impossible, yet Job parallels it to the certainty of human death. This reflects ancient views on nature’s vastness, making its "failure" all the more shocking.
- "and the river decayeth and drieth up": This second parallel strengthens the first with similar imagery, doubling down on the impossibility of such natural occurrences. "Decayeth" (laying waste) and "drieth up" describe a total desiccation, leaving no remnant. Together, these two analogies establish an ultimate and irreversible end point, the natural world reflecting Job's perceived irreversible fate of human beings upon death.
Job 14 11 Bonus section
Job's lament in 14:11 reveals the limits of his understanding regarding God's long-term plan for humanity. While his contemporaries and his own painful experience might have suggested a permanent end upon physical death, the Bible's unfolding revelation introduces a much greater hope. Job’s analogy of vanishing waters subtly reflects a cultural understanding of water as fundamental for life. Its disappearance is catastrophic. His pre-scientific worldview would have seen the sea as a permanent, immense entity, thus making its "failure" an ultimate, impossible scenario used to emphasize the greater certainty of human departure. This hyperbolic language serves to convey extreme hopelessness. The question Job implicitly raises – "If there's no return, what's the purpose?" – is a universal human cry addressed by later biblical themes of resurrection, judgment, and eternal life, particularly in the New Testament. Job's words serve as a crucial backdrop against which the later biblical emphasis on God's sovereignty over life and death, and His promise of future resurrection through Christ, shines all the brighter.
Job 14 11 Commentary
Job 14:11 is a powerful expression of Job's deeply pessimistic view of human mortality, born from his suffering and the absence of immediate divine intervention. He employs two striking images of desiccation in the natural world: the unlikely disappearance of a sea's waters and the complete drying and decay of a river. These are not meant literally, but serve as hyperboles to emphasize the absolute finality of human life in death, as he understood it at that time. Unlike the hopeful image of a tree re-sprouting from its stump (Job 14:7-9), Job perceives no such cycle of renewal for humans. Once a person dies, they "vanish" just as completely and irreversibly as a sea or river might dry up. This reflects a common, pre-resurrection hope view found in certain parts of the Old Testament concerning earthly existence. It’s a statement of earthly, physical finality, articulating Job's torment over humanity’s perceived lack of earthly comeback or resurrection from Sheol. Job's despair here is profound; he cannot reconcile God's justice with his suffering, and this verse illustrates his feeling that life simply ends, with no hope of revival. This stark reality sets up the theological tension that the rest of the book and subsequent revelation in Scripture, especially through Christ, would ultimately resolve with the promise of resurrection.