Bible Strands
Job 14:7
For there is hope for a tree: If it is cut down, it will sprout again, and its tender shoots will not fail.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Job speaks directly to God in a rhetorical monologue about human mortality, using a tree's lifecycle to frame his question about death. The surrounding verses shift between addressing God and describing a stump left in the soil.
The words — The phrase יֵ֣שׁ (yesh) "there is" and תִּקְוָה (tiqwah) "hope" establish the tree's inherent capacity for renewal. יַחֲלִ֑יף (yaḥalîp), literally "it will change/replace itself," describes the biological process of sprouting afresh after being cut.
The thread — The text's botanical imagery of rooting and budding reappears in Isaiah 27:6 and Isaiah 11:1 to describe future national restoration. Job 14:14 immediately extends the tree metaphor into a direct inquiry about human resurrection.
Why it lands — The text states that a cut tree will sprout again before asking whether a dead human can do the same. It requires the reader to stop equating human mortality with botanical resilience and to confront the stated finality of death.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease.
Cross-references
- Isaiah 27:6 In the days to come, Jacob will take root. Israel will bud and blossom and fill the whole world with fruit.
- Isaiah 11:1 Then a shoot will spring up from the stump of Jesse, and a Branch from his roots will bear fruit.
- Job 14:14 When a man dies, will he live again? All the days of my hard service I will wait, until my renewal comes.
- Daniel 4:23 And you, O king, saw a watcher, a holy one, coming down from heaven and saying: ‘Cut down the tree and destroy it, but leave the stump with its roots in the ground, with a band of iron and bronze around it, in the tender grass of the field. Let him be drenched with the dew of heaven, and graze with the beasts of the field till seven times pass him by.’
- Job 19:10 He tears me down on every side until I am gone; He uproots my hope like a tree.
- Daniel 4:15 But leave the stump with its roots in the ground, with a band of iron and bronze around it, in the tender grass of the field. Let him be drenched with the dew of heaven and graze with the beasts on the grass of the earth.