Job 14:11

11 For the sea wastes in time, and a river fails and is dried up.

Job 14:11 Meaning and Commentary

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 of that and the river Jordan, and the drying up of that before the ark of the Lord, and the return of both to their places again.

Job 14:11 In-Context

9 it will blossom from the scent of water, and will produce a crop, as one newly planted.

10 But a man that has died is utterly gone; and when a mortal has fallen, he is no more.

11 For the sea wastes in time, and a river fails and is dried up.

12 And man that has lain down shall certainly not rise again till the heaven be dissolved, and they shall not awake from their sleep.

13 For oh that thou hadst kept me in the grave, and hadst hidden me until thy wrath should cease, and thou shouldest set me a time in which thou wouldest remember me!