$28 THE WORLD TO COME. Reason I. The express words of the text are, O that thou wouldst hide me in the grave! not in a darksome place like the grave and 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. II. He seems to limit the continuance of man in the state of death to the duration of the heavens; verse 12. Man hells down and riseth not till the heavens be no more: not absolutely for ever does Job desire to be hidden in the grave, but till the dissolution of all these visible 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 wakened 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. III. In other places of this book Job gives us some eminent hints of his hope of a resurrection, especially that divine passage and prophecy, when he spake as one surrounded with a vision of glory, and filled with the light and joy of faith ; Job xix. 25,, 27. I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though after uty skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God ; whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold and not another; though my reins be consumed within me. But in many parts of this book the good man lets us know, that he had no manner of hope of any restoration to health and peace in this life ; Job vii. 6, 7, S. lily days are spent without hope :my eye shall no more see good : the eye of him that bath seen me shall see one no more: thy' eyes are upon me, and I am not. Verse 21. Now shall l sleep in the dust, and thou shalt seek me in the morning, but I shall not be. Job xvii. 15. Where. is now my . hope. ? As for my hope, who shall see it ? He and his hope ,seemed to go down to the bars of the pit together, and to rest in the dust. And if Job .had no hope of a restoration in this world, then his hopes must point to the resurrection of the dead. ÍV. If we turn these verses here, as well as that noble passage in Job xix. to the more: evangelical sense of a resurrec-
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