He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not.
Parallel translations
- WEB He grows up like a flower, and is cut down. He also flees like a shadow, and doesn’t continue.
- BSB Like a flower, he comes forth, then withers away; like a fleeting shadow, he does not endure.
- NKJV He comes forth like a flower and fades away; He flees like a shadow and does not continue.
- NASB “Like a flower he comes out and withers. He also flees like a shadow and does not remain.
- NLT We blossom like a flower and then wither. Like a passing shadow, we quickly disappear.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Human life blooms briefly like a flower and vanishes like a shadow. Its beauty is real but fleeting.
Overview
Job compares man to a flower that springs up and is cut down, and to a passing shadow. The images stress how quickly life flourishes and fades. Scripture often uses such pictures to teach humility and to direct hope beyond this transient life to the God who is everlasting.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 14
- Isa 40:6–8The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field:
- 1 Pet 1:24For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away:
- Job 8:9(For we are but of yesterday, and know nothing, because our days upon earth are a shadow:)
- Ps 103:15–16As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.
- Jas 4:14Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.
- 1 Chr 29:15For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding.
- Jas 1:10–11But the rich, in that he is made low: because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away.
- Ps 144:4Man is like to vanity: his days are as a shadow that passeth away.
- Ps 102:11My days are like a shadow that declineth; and I am withered like grass.
- Eccl 8:13But it shall not be well with the wicked, neither shall he prolong his days, which are as a shadow; because he feareth not before God.
- Ps 92:12The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree: he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon.
- Job 9:25–26Now my days are swifter than a post: they flee away, they see no good.
- Ps 90:5–9Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up.
- Ps 92:7When the wicked spring as the grass, and when all the workers of iniquity do flourish; it is that they shall be destroyed for ever:
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Christ at the center
Job's cry for a mediator who can lay his hand on both God and man, and his confidence that 'my Redeemer lives' and will stand on the earth, reaches forward to Jesus the living Redeemer.
How Job 14:2 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.