In Job, chapter three, verse thirteen, the servant of God conceived the grave as a place of rest. He did not see it as extinction but as a place of continuing personal existence, as verses thirteen through nineteen. The theme verse comes from the Speech of Job section in chapter three, where his friends Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite already came earlier to comfort him. However, several days passed as Job’s friends sat by silent. After they came and did that, Job opened his mouth in verse two, “Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, there is a man-child conceived.”
Job complained of those present at birth for their tender attention to him. No creature comes into the world so helpless as a man. God’s power and providence upheld our frail lives, and his pity and patience spared our forfeited lives. Natural affection is put into parents’ hearts by God. To desire to die that we may be with Christ, that we may be free from sin, is the effect and evidence of grace; but to die only, that we may be delivered, from the troubles of this life, savors of corruption. It is our wisdom and duty to make the best of that which is, be it living or dying; and so to live to the Lord, and die to the Lord, as in both to be his, Ro 14:8. Observe how Job describes the repose of the grave; There the wicked cease from troubling. When persecutors die, they can no longer persecute. There, the weary are at rest: in the grave, they rest from all their labors. And a rest from sin, temptation, conflict, sorrows, and labors remains in the presence and enjoyment of God. There believers rest in Jesus, nay, as far as we trust in the Lord Jesus and obey him, we here find rest to our souls, though in the world we have tribulation.