to go away · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person common plural
sea
יָ֑םYam
H3220
a sea (as breaking in noisy surf) or large body of water · noun, common masculine singular absolute
flood
וְ֝נָהָ֗רve.na.Har
H5104
a stream (including the sea · conjunction + noun, common masculine singular absolute
decayeth
יֶחֱרַ֥בye.che.Rav
H2717
to parch (through drought) i.e. (by analogy · verb, qal imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
up
וְיָבֵֽשׁve.ya.Vesh
H3001
to be ashamed · conjunction + verb, qal sequential perfect, 3rd person masculine singular
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Isaiah 19:5 And the waters shall fail from the sea, and the river shall be wasted and dried up.
Job 6:15-18 My brethren have dealt deceitfully as a brook, and as the stream of brooks they pass away;
Jeremiah 15:18 Why is my pain perpetual, and my wound incurable, which refuseth to be healed? wilt thou be altogether unto me as a liar, and as waters that…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Job 14:7-15
We have seen what Job has to say concerning life; let us now see what he has to say concerning death, which his thoughts were very much conversant with, now that he was sick and sore. It is not unseasonable, when we are in health, to think of dying; but it is an inexcusable incogitancy if, when we are already taken into the custody of death's messengers, we look upon it as a thing at a distance. Job had already shown that death will come, and that its hour is already fixed. Now here he shows,
I. That death is a removal for ever out of this world. This he had spoken of before (Job 7:9, Job 7:10), and now he mentions it again; for, though it be a truth that needs not be proved, yet it needs to…
sea--that is, a lake, or pool formed from the outspreading of a river. Job lived near the Euphrates: and "sea" is applied to it (Jer 51:36; Isa 27:1). So of the Nile (Isa 19:5).
fail--utterly disappeared by drying up. The rugged channel of the once flowing water answers to the outstretched corpse ("lieth down," Job 14:12) of the once living man.
John Gill on Job 14:11
As the waters fail from the sea,.... the words may be rendered either without the as, and denote dissimilitude, and the sense be, that the waters go from the sea and return again, as with the tide:
and the flood decays and dries up; and yet is supplied again with water: "but man lieth down, and riseth not again", Job 14:12; or else with the as, and express likeness; as the waters when they fail from the sea, or get out of lakes, and into another channel, never return more; and as a flood, occasioned by the waters of a river overflowing its banks, never return into it more; so man, when he dies, never returns to this world any more. The Targum restrains this to the Red sea, and the parting o…
10 But man dieth, he lieth there stretched out,
Man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?
11 The waters flow away from the sea,
And a stream decayeth and dryeth up:
12 So man lieth down and riseth not again;
Till the heavens pass away they wake not,
And are not aroused from their sleep.
How much less favoured is the final lot of man! He dies, and then lies there completely broken down and melted away (חלשׁ( yaw, in the neuter signification, confectum esse, rendered in the Targum by אתּבר and אתמקמק). The fut. consec. continues the description of the cheerless results of death: He who has thus once fallen together is gone without leaving a trace of life. In Job 14:11. this vanishing away with…
The Church Fathers
"The sea diminishes for a time and fills up soon. In speaking of the ebb and flow of the sea, it means, or on all the shores, when this phenomenon takes place, the water decreases and increases imperceptibly, at moments fixed by the motion of the moon, or that for us, or for other regions, the water rises until the middle of the day, then goes down again.
By calling death "sleep," Job has clearly given us the hope for resurrection. However, he says, we will not awake "until heavens are no more." That is obvious, because, as Isaiah said, it is necessary that "they shall be rolled together like a scroll." It is necessary that all their powers are shaken, that the sun and the moon are obscured and that the stars, after being unsettled, fall like leaves. Then, at the sound of the trumpet, the angels will raise us from the dead, as from "sleep," obviously under the order and the sign of God.
Ver. 11, 12. As if the waters fail from the sea, and the river being emptied drieth up: so man lieth down, and riseth not. The mind of man is the sea, and the thoughts of his mind, as it were, a wave of the sea; which sometimes swell in anger, are made calm by grace, and from hatred run out in bitterness; but when man dieth, 'the waters of the sea fail,' in that according to the words of the Psalmist, In that very day his thoughts perish. And again it is written concerning the dying soul, Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy shall perish together. Thus 'the river being emptied drieth up,' in that, when the soul is withdrawn, the body remains empty. For the lifeless body is as it were the empty channel of a river, wherein it is to be marked with an attentive eye that the present life, i.e. the time while the soul stays in the body, is likened to the sea and to a river, for the water of the sea is bitter, of a river sweet. And because we that are living here are at one time under the influence of certain bitternesses, and at another time are seen to be serene and gentle with sweetness, the course of the present life is set forth by the similitude of the sea and a river. But herein that seems to be exceedingly hard which is added, So man lieth down, and riseth not. Wherefore do we so toil and labour, if we are not straining after the recompense of the Resurrection? And how is it said, and riseth not, when it is written: We shall all rise again, but we shall not all be changed? And again, If in this life only we have hope of life in Christ, we are of all men most miserable: and when 'Truth' says by Itself, All that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation. But the sentence subjoined points out what distinction there is concealed in the sentence preceding. For it is added; Till the heavens be no more they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep. For it is plain that they shall not rise again, that is, till the heavens be no more, in that except the end of the world come, the race of mankind shall not wake to life from the sleep of death. Not, then, that he shall not rise again at all, but that before the crumbling of the heavens the human race shall not rise again, is what he teaches. Moreover it is a…
Dictionary and topics
Dead (People) · UNCLASSIFIED SCRIPTURES RELATING TO — UNCLASSIFIED SCRIPTURES RELATING TO
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
keep an eye on: Job lamented God’s relentless surveillance (7:8, 17-20; 10:6, 14; 13:27).
Rashi on Job 14:11
As the waters fail from the sea From the place whence the river comes and emerges, from its source that comes to it from the sea. [Alternative explanation of Rashi: From the place whence the river comes, and they went away from its source (from) which (the water) comes to it.]
and the river that comes from there is drained dry forever. So does a man lie down and not rise.
