Death and resurrection [have] even been muttered in conversations between…the vegetables. —C.S. Lewis
From Job 14:7 to verse 22, we are taken on a nature hike. Job first asks us to look at the wonder of life in a tree. “For there is hope for a tree, if it is cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its tender shoots will not cease. Though its root may grow old in the earth, and its stump may die in the ground, yet at the scent of water it will bud and bring forth branches like a plant” (vv 7-9). Are the leaves not the manufacturing center of the tree, harnessing the energy of the sun to bring growth and vigor to the plant? Yet life will arise out of seeming death. On the other hand, look at a mountain. Here’s a very different principle at work. “But as a mountain falls and crumbles away, and as a rock is moved from its place; as water wears away stones, and as torrents wash away the soil of the earth; so You destroy the hope of man” (vv 18- 19). The collapse of mountains, the wearing down of stones, the washing away of soil—all these cannot be restored. There is no life in the mineral kingdom, so no possibility of rejuvenation and restoration by the laws of nature. Is this a fitting illustration of the way “You destroy the hope of man”? Not so with the plant world. Even when every branch has been removed, leaving just a stump in the ground, “there is hope for a tree.” In between these two lessons from nature, Job poses this question: “If a man dies, shall he live again?” (v 14). Surely a man is more like a tree than a rock, for the one has life and the other does not. However, a man’s body, when “he passes on” (v 20), returns to dust, becoming part of the mineral kingdom. So is that the end? No, said Job. “You shall call, and I will answer You” (v 15). Ah, said Longfellow, “Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul.”