DISC. xr.] AND. JOY AT THE RESURRECTION. 551 and he hopes for the happiness of, a future 'state when God should call him out of the grave. He knew that the blessed God would have a desire to restore the work of his own hands to life again, and Job would answer the call of his God into a resurrectionwith holy pleasure and joy." Now there are 'four or five reasons which incline Hie . to prefer, this latter.sense of the words, and to shew that the comforts and hope which Job aspires to in this place,, are only to be derived from a resurrection to final happi-. ness. Reason I. The express words of the text are, O. that thou wouldst hide me in the grave ! not in a darksolne place like the grave ; ant, where the literal sense of the words is plain and agreeable to the context; there is no need of making metaphors to explain. them. There is nothing that can encourage us to suppose that Job had any hope of happiness in this world again, after he was gone down to the grave, and therefore he would not make so unreasonable a petition to the great God. This seems to be too foolish and too hopeless a request for us to put into the mouth of so wise and good a man. Reason II. He seems to limit the continuance of man in the state ofdeath to the duration of the heavens ; verse 12. Man lieth down and riseth not till the heavens be na pore; not absolutely for ever does Job desire to behid- den in the grave, but till the dissolutionof all these visi- ble things, these heavens and this earth, and the great rising day for the sons of men. These words seem,to have a plain aspect towards the resurrection. And especially when he adds, " they shall not be wa= kened nor raised out of their sleep." The brutes when dying are never said to sleep in scripture, because they shall never rise again ; but this is a frequent word used to signify the death of man both in the Old Testament and in the New, because he only lies down in the grave for a season, as in a bed of sleep, in 'order to awake and arise hereafter. Reason III. In other places of this book 'Job gives us some eminent hints of his hope of,a resurrection, especi- ally that divine passage and prophecy, when he spake as one surrounded with a vision ofglory, and filled with the light and the joy of faith. Job xix. 25,,27. " I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter 2 N4
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