Job 21 · a question people ask
"They lie down alike in the dust" (21:26). Is Job saying death makes no difference?
Job sets two deaths side by side. One man "dies in his full strength, being wholly at ease and quiet" (21:23), "Another dies in bitterness of soul, and never tastes of good" (21:25), and "They lie down alike in the dust. The worm covers them" (21:26). Of the wicked man he says, "Yet he will be borne to the grave. Men will keep watch over the tomb" (21:32). Ecclesiastes says something close: "There is one event to the righteous and to the wicked" (Ecclesiastes 9:2). In 21:23-26 Job speaks of dying and of the dust, not of anything after it. He had asked in chapter 14, "If a man dies, will he live again?" (14:14), and chapter 19's honest questions set out how Christians read 19:25-26. These notes don't build a teaching about death, or about what comes after it, from 21:26.
The verses
“One dies in his full strength, being wholly at ease and quiet. His pails are full of milk. The marrow of his bones is moistened. Another dies in bitterness of soul, and never tastes of good. They lie down alike in the dust. The worm covers them.”
“Yet he will be borne to the grave. Men will keep watch over the tomb.”
“All things come alike to all. There is one event to the righteous and to the wicked; to the good, to the clean, to the unclean, to him who sacrifices, and to him who doesn’t sacrifice. As is the good, so is the sinner; he who takes an oath, as he who fears an oath.”
“If a man dies, will he live again? I would wait all the days of my warfare, until my release should come.”