We blossom like a flower and then wither. Like a passing shadow, we quickly disappear.
Parallel translations
- WEB He grows up like a flower, and is cut down. He also flees like a shadow, and doesn’t continue.
- KJV He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not.
- 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.
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 of one saying, “Cry!” One said, “What shall I cry?” “All flesh is like grass, and all its glory is like the flower of the field.
- 1 Pet 1:24For, “All flesh is like grass, and all of man’s glory like the flower in the grass. The grass withers, and its flower falls;
- Job 8:9(For we are but of yesterday, and know nothing, because our days on earth are a shadow.)
- Ps 103:15–16As for man, his days are like grass. As a flower of the field, so he flourishes.
- Jas 4:14Whereas you don’t know what your life will be like tomorrow. For what is your life? For you are a vapor, that appears for a little time, and then vanishes away.
- 1 Chr 29:15For we are strangers before you, and foreigners, as all our fathers were. Our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is no remaining.
- Jas 1:10–11and the rich, in that he is made humble, because like the flower in the grass, he will pass away.
- Ps 144:4Man is like a breath. His days are like a shadow that passes away.
- Ps 102:11My days are like a long shadow. I have withered like grass.
- Eccl 8:13But it shall not be well with the wicked, neither shall he lengthen days like a shadow; because he doesn’t fear God.
- Ps 92:12The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree. He will grow like a cedar in Lebanon.
- Job 9:25–26“Now my days are swifter than a runner. They flee away, they see no good.
- Ps 90:5–9You sweep them away as they sleep. In the morning they sprout like new grass.
- Ps 92:7though the wicked spring up as the grass, and all the evildoers flourish, they will be destroyed forever.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
Resources, by level
Commentaries & study tools
Free animated overview and word-study videos for this book.
Sermons and teaching on this passage from across YouTube.
Clear, readable, conservative exposition — the best free place to start on any passage.
Matthew Henry, Barnes, Gill, the Pulpit Commentary, Ellicott, Cambridge, and more — stacked on one page for this exact verse.
The beloved Puritan exposition of this whole book — warm, devotional, and verse by verse (free, CCEL).
Hebrew/Greek interlinear, word definitions, and cross-references for this verse.
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.