Saved by the Well – Job’s Tree with the Scent of water

Saved by the Well – Job’s Tree with the Scent of Water.

“For a tree, there is hope that if cut down, it will sprout again, that its shoots will continue to grow. Even if its roots grow old in the earth and its stump dies in the ground, yet at the scent of water it will bud and put forth branches like a young plant.”  (Job 14:7-9).

SAVED: The Hebrew word for save is “Yasha,” which means to be set free into the wide open; to be delivered in a time of desperate need; to be saved from destruction and certain death. “Salvation” literally means to become spacious, and refers to “the sense of deliverance from an existence that had become confined, compressed, or cramped.” (Eugene Peterson). When Jesus delivers us from our inner spiritual confinement, we are liberated into a wide open, broad, expansive place. The word for “wide open space” is the opposite of a straitjacket. Without Jesus, our soul will never be freed from our spiritual straitjacket. There are three passages in Psalms that describe this freedom deliverance beautifully:

1. “From my distress, I called upon the Lord. He answered me and set me on a large place. After being in a tight spot, the Lord placed me into a broad space. Because I was hemmed in, I called on Lord Yahweh. He answered me and gave me room.” (Ps. 118:5);
2. “Lord, you have not given me over into the hands of the Enemy; You have liberated me and set my feet in a wide expanse, a good and spacious land. You have given me the freedom to roam at large, where I can freely move. You have given me room to breathe.” (Ps. 31:8);
3. “The Lord rescued me because He delighted in me. He brought me out to freedom into a wide-open space. My soul has been delivered because of God’s love for me, and my soul finally has some elbow room!” (Ps. 18:19).

THE WELL: There are four Hebrew words used in the Jewish Bible to describe the different kinds of ancient wells. There was the traditional well that was a deep hole dug in the ground to tap into an underground source of water. Another type of well was a fountain spring that had naturally broken through the earth’s surface on its own without man’s help. The wellspring is another version of well in Scripture in which fresh water flowed out of the ground in any number of ways to become available for cleansing, nourishment, refreshment, for survival itself. Life-giving wells of water have always been a powerful picture of our dependence upon God for spiritual survival. Just as Creator God has designed the human body to completely depend on water to live, our spiritual life totally relies on His presence in us to not just survive but to flourish. God is our spiritual well of fresh water, the only stable source of nourishment and purity. He is our fountain of life that gushes forth to replenish and cleanse us. God is our eternal wellspring of living water that will never run dry. Each of us is born spiritually dehydrated, and God alone is the constant, reliable water source to bring us back to life. As the silly joke goes, wells are a deep subject, and the biblical wells involve such stalwarts as Hagar and Abraham; Isaac and Moses; Samson and Solomon; the psalmists and the prophets. And of course, the glorious fulfillment of all these ancient stories of wells… Messiah Jesus and the woman at the well.

“… at the scent of water…” (Job 14:9).

The Underground Stream that Renews Life. In this particular passage in his book, Job decides to look at nature as he explores the idea of death and the afterlife. He points to a tree and probes the possibility of coming back from the grave. Job decides to think out loud with God about life after death. He was well ahead of his time even considering this topic. God simply hadn’t revealed much if anything to His people about the afterlife. Heaven and the resurrection only came to light in much later Hebrew thinking. Job was a pioneer in this subject, and many would have denounced him as a heretic for even bringing the topic up for discussion. And yet as Job considers, with God as his audience, the possibility of the afterlife, with perhaps his three friends listening in, he actually became what Mike Mason called “the earliest Christian prophet of the resurrection.”

A Fresh Supply of Water. Job insightfully brings up the image of a tree that is able to come back to life after being completely cut to the ground, with dried-up roots and a rotting stump. And yet, Job says, new shoots can sprout if it senses water and taps into a fresh supply. An old dead tree can spring back to life, Job observes, so maybe an old dead person can as well? Job continues to explore this idea as he displays his moments of doubt… “He dies, and dead he remains.” (v. 10). No, Job seems to conclude, it seems like a human being “once laid to rest will never rise again.” (v. 12).

But Job is like a dog with a bone. He continues to contemplate this idea as he asks God to hide him somewhere in the place of the dead until His judgment is done. Hide me in my grave, Job requests, and then don’t forget I’m there! Mark your calendar, God, so you remember me there when I am dead in my grave. So Job repeats his question… “Can the dead live again?” (v. 14). He is earnestly asking for some hope after his intense suffering. In fact, Job declares, “I will wait for my renewal to come!” (v. 14). Another translation puts it, “I will wait until I arise!” Somehow, Job decides, my dead body will become just like that dead tree, it will get a scent of water and become like new again! One can tell that Job has developed an underlying faith in God, that He will make things right in the end.

Job was the Bible’s earliest prophet, anticipating the Messiah, the living water of the Holy Spirit, the resurrection, and the final call of Jesus at the Last Day. He anticipated the gospel two thousand years ahead of its time. God inspired Job to be a spiritual pioneer, even as Job didn’t fully understand everything he was saying. His thoughts and conjectures carried a lot more spiritual weight and significance than he could ever know. Job was an intuitive believer without knowing anything about Scripture or the Temple or anything else that God might have communicated to others. Job was on his own in his thinking, and God was with him all the way. It is so inspiring to see that the oldest believer in the books, probably the first in human history, has all the instincts of a true believer.

The Prophecy of the Water. Job was waxing poetic with his phrase “the scent of water.” (v. 9). He was noting that somehow a root from a dead stump is able to sense the presence of water and grow towards it. That water will then enable that dead stump to spring back to life, the source of new life. Job here provides a beautiful picture of how we, even though we ought to be dead stumps, can still receive a source of new life. Roots that appear to be too old and deformed for renewal can nonetheless receive living water, the water of life everlasting. As Jesus dramatically said to the crowd in the Temple, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink’… By this He meant the Spirit, whom those who believed on Him were later to receive.” (John 7:37-39). The water giving new life to the dead stump is the Holy Spirit, mentioned time and again in the Hebrew Bible. (Ps. 36:9; Is. 12:3, 49:10 and 55:1; Jer. 2:13 and 17:13; Zech 13:1 and 14:8). “For I shall pour water on the thirsty soil and streams on the dry ground. I shall pour out my Spirit on your descendants, my blessing on your offspring, and they will spring up among the grass, like willows on the banks of a stream.”  (Isaiah 44:3-4). This living water comes from Jesus, the Fountain of Life, and renews our lives now and for life eternal. In mentioning the scent of water, Job was being poetic. He was also being prophetic. Little did Job realize that his picture of the scent of water revealed the truth that our salvation and sanctification involves the sensing of the Holy Spirit. Job, without knowing it, also anticipated the ultimate river of life in the New Jerusalem, flowing through the Tree of Paradise. (Rev. 22:1).

The Prophecy of the Dead Stump. When he developed the image of the tree that was cut down, resulting in a dead stump that ended up with new shoots, Job didn’t know he was anticipating the coming Messiah. He didn’t know about the prophet Isaiah’s announcement that “There shall come forth a Shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots.” (Is. 11:1). Job couldn’t have known that the royal line of David would be chopped down, that the reign of David’s kingdom would be a dead stump, but that the Messiah, the prophesied Son of David, would be a new Shoot sprouting from that old dead stump, just as Job described. Job couldn’t have known that the righteous Branch he imagined would truly, eventually grow out of that old stump. What Job had envisioned as merely an illustration from nature became the perfect picture of the most important event in history. Job anticipated Isaiah, and Isaiah anticipated the Messiah.

The Prophecy of the Resurrection. Job continued to be fascinated by the question of the afterlife, and it seems he concluded his thoughts with his amazing conviction in 19:35, “As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives! He will stand upon the earth at last. And after my body has decayed, yet in my body I will see God!”  By the time Jesus started His ministry, the idea of the resurrection of the dead was believed by many Jews, including the Pharisees. The resurrection didn’t sound nearly as outlandish to Jesus’ listeners as it did to Job’s friends. The Jewish believers throughout the Hebrew Bible were for the most part not all that interested in the afterlife. They didn’t talk much about heaven or hell as a place to go after death. Their sense of God’s judgments were intended for life here on earth. People who were cursed in their life if they didn’t obey God were experiencing for the most part their hell on earth. They were judged here and now, and were suitably punished if that’s what God wanted to do. And the same for God’s blessings. People living on earth could be blessed during this life for obeying God. They didn’t need to think about the blessed life after they die, since they more or less have their heaven on earth. There were a few hints, though, that some old saints in the Hebrew Bible were thinking about an afterlife with God. Daniel 12:2-3, “Many of those whose bodies lie dead and buried will rise up, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting disgrace. Those who are wise will shine as bright as the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness will shine like the stars forever.” There are other passages that refer to the resurrection of the dead, including Isaiah 26:19, Hosea 13:14, and many times in Psalms (17:15, 49:15, 71:20). Most of what Jesus had to say about the resurrection seemed to have their foundation in those passages in the Hebrew Bible. Jesus switched things around by making it more of a focus. Job was indeed a pioneer in thinking about life after death, and he seemed to have both the intuition and the faith that believed it was true.

The Prophecy of the Last Call. Job made an astounding statement of faith in 14:15, and his declaration turned out to be messianic. He concluded his discussion with God of the afterlife by declaring that after his time in the grave, “You will call, and I will answer you!” Job didn’t understand, of course, that indeed God will call everyone out of their graves on the Last Day. Jesus said in John 5:28-29 that “a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear my voice, the voice of the Son of Man, and come out of their graves – those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to condemnation.” Job couldn’t have known that “the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout!”   (1 Thess. 4:6). Job, the prophet who believes that, when he is dead in the grave, he will somehow hear the call of the Lord.