NOTES for Job 14:1-22

In addressing God, Job is, of course, fully aware of the distance separating a human being from God. A distance not only in power, but also in righteousness. He knows that the fullness of righteousness is with God. Or rather, that God Himself is the fullness of righteousness. And, of course, a human being is unclean before God. Nor is this merely a matter of sins. Uncleanness and sin are not the same thing. Uncleanness is anything at all that can prevent a person from being sanctified.

Yet uncleanness itself becomes sin if no steps are taken to get rid of it. Figuratively speaking, there is no sin in getting dirty while doing dirty work, but remaining dirty longer than that work requires is already a sin. This is how it has always been seen. But at the time when the Book of Job was written, something else emerged: the idea that one must preserve not only purity, but also the state of sanctification characteristic of those who stand at God's altar. This was the ideal of righteousness.

People had begun speaking of this even before the exile, when the famous words were spoken: “Be holy, for I, Yahweh your God, am holy.” After the exile, righteousness was no longer even conceivable apart from such holiness. Uncleanness was wholly incompatible with it, yet the only way a person could avoid defilement altogether was not to live at all. Job, of course, understands all this perfectly well. He understands that he falls short of God's ideal and can offer God only an ideal of human righteousness. At least as he, Job, understands it. But God's ideal is unattainable in principle.

If God puts the question in those terms, a human being will be found guilty in any case. But what can be done about it? Job believes in the Day of Judgment and in the resurrection of all on that last day. If only it were possible somehow to preserve oneself: to be purified, sanctified, to become perfectly righteous, and then descend into Sheol and wait there for that very day of universal resurrection, no longer living and therefore no longer becoming defiled! Then a person would emerge on that day in all the purity and holiness possible for a human being, and stand before God in that state.

If only one did not have to drag shining white garments through life until they turned grey with dust and black with dirt! If only, at the finest moments of Job's righteous life, God would hide him away like a treasure in a treasury, and he, Job, could lie there quietly until God wished to see his righteousness again on the last day! Yet God seems to want nothing of the kind. Why does He not want Job at his very best, pure and righteous, but instead cast him into a life where his righteousness is inevitably stained by the uncleanness of this world? Job cannot understand it.

Job clearly understands no worse than his friends that there are no sinless people in the world (v. 4). He also understands that human life is short and, as a rule, joyless (vv. 1-2). That is why he asks God for mercy toward man (vv. 3, 5-6), because man can do nothing about his own sinfulness. Besides, man is mortal, his life is passing, and he has nothing to hope for (vv. 7-12). Job believes in the resurrection, and he would also like to believe that after the resurrection the situation will change radically (vv. 13-17). Job dreams of the day when God, bringing him out of Sheol, will free him from the power of evil and cleanse him from all sins. Then at last Job will be able to stand face to face with God, and his sinfulness, from which no one can completely free himself, will no longer darken his righteousness. But this hope clearly seems ghostly to Job; he understands that everything will be very different and that there is no hope of better things for him (vv. 18-22).

Such hopelessness against the background of faith in the possibility of resurrection seems strange. But this passage in the Book of Job clearly reflects the spirit of the age in which it was written. Of course, Judaism of the fifth-fourth centuries BC had not completely lost faith in the resurrection and the day of Judgment, just as it had not completely lost its messianism. But this perspective was evidently not very distinct in it. In the Judaism of that age, it most plausibly happened as it did in medieval Christianity, where, unlike the first centuries of Christian history, the expectation of the second coming of Christ was usually not very intense. Job could not have been unaware that Judgment awaited everyone at the end of time, and that the existing order of things was to be replaced by the messianic Kingdom. Yet this knowledge remained somewhat abstract for him, abstract enough that he does not even firmly and unambiguously connect the day of Judgment and the resurrection with the complete transformation of the human person and his cleansing from sin.

Such cleansing, even after the resurrection on the day of Judgment, seems to him an impossible dream. It is no wonder that Job's view of human life in general, and of his own life in particular, proves so pessimistic: outside the context of the messianic perspective in the fullness revealed to the prophets, man truly had nothing to count on before the face of God's eternity. Job understands this, but he cannot change anything. Indeed, the perspective of the Kingdom was revealed to the prophets as part of the revelation they received from God. For Job, however, the main revelation was still ahead, and without it there is no serious way to speak about such things as Judgment, resurrection, and the Kingdom; they will still remain no more than theological abstractions or beautiful fantasies. Job has no time for abstractions or fantasies. He is seeking the answer to the chief question of his life, and he has no time left for anything else.

Here we can also recall the Gospel words about the equally brief beauty of the lilies of the field, which serves as an argument for God's care for people: "if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today exists and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will He clothe you, O you of little faith" Matt. 6:28-30. Job sees no way out of the situation in which he finds himself, and this no longer concerns only his personal situation. Job's troubles have sharpened in him the sense of the unbearable tragedy of existence, and he constantly returns to thoughts about the desirability of ending earthly existence, and with it suffering. Job can no longer think about anything else. He is nothing but pain, his flesh aches upon him, and his soul within him suffers.

Acceptance of life is inseparable from acceptance of the Giver of life. But Job, before our eyes, is losing trust in Him. Job does not look beyond earthly life, and life itself appears to him so unbearable that it seems equally hopeless to him on both sides of the line of death. And this is a terrible moment for any person who is deprived of the Revelation about Christ crucified and risen.