Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble.
Man born of woman means every human being lives a short life filled with sorrow, anxiety and pain, fleeting and fragile like a flower cut down and a shadow that flees away. This mortality came through sin inherited from Adam, for by nature man is subject to decay and death while only God possesses immortality in himself. Death is real and total, a sleep of unconscious silence in the dust, in Sheol the common grave of all mankind where the dead wait hidden until an appointed time. No one can restore his own life, so the only hope is to wait for God to call and give change through resurrection by Christ the living Redeemer. The temporary life therefore gives opportunity to come to Christ for spiritual life, forsake sin, and prepare now for eternal life in the immortal state to come.
Words and Context
The unqualified noun for man denotes mankind in its broadest sense, the whole human race and the whole human family, and every person in that class, not Jews only or Christians only and not one particular person. The Hebrew word for man in the verse is adam, the same word used for the man who gives up the ghost and for the man who turns to dust, and there is no difference in meaning between adam and the other Hebrew words translated man in the chapter. If adam meant only the spiritual part of man, then that spiritual part itself would have human birth and would return to dust.
Being born of woman marks human life as beginning with birth and as inherited through Eve, who was named Life after the fall, and it presents human weakness and mortality as realities, including the fact that people grow old. That brief troubled existence stands in contrast with the unending life that comes through Christ, who is life. The life that follows is short and marked by trouble, anxiety, and care.
The connected images of a flower that comes forth and is cut down and of a shadow that flees and does not continue present life as fleeting and fragile. Life passes from infancy and youth to old age as quickly as a flower blossoms, flourishes, and is soon cut down, and people vanish like shadows. A person's allotted life is like a thread that is spun out and then ends, like flowers withering, like newly sprung grass, like a bird gone in a day, like an hour or a span of time, like a dream, a spark, a vapor, and a leaf through spring, summer, and autumn, passing from life to the grave where all ranks and conditions meet in death. In its context this brevity supports the point that the dead have no awareness of events in this life, not knowing whether their children are honored or brought low.
The verse belongs to the book of Job, which presents the problems of human suffering, sin, and God's providence in poetic treatment and presents Job as a real person. Job's affliction is a discipline through which God brings him, not proof of the sin his friends wrongly accuse him of, and his trial and patience teach that suffering does not necessarily mean God is displeased with the sufferer. People are prone to misjudge others in the same way Job's friends misjudged him. The chapter is associated with concern about the future of deceased friends.
Brief Troubled Life
Human life is of few days and full of trouble, anxiety, and care. This is proved true by every human being to a greater or less extent. Like a flower that comes forth and is cut down and like a passing shadow that does not continue, a person does not continue in this life. The brevity and affliction frame the question whether a person who dies will live again.
The trouble belongs to this life while people wait for their change to come. While in this state the flesh has pain and the soul within mourns, which is the physical and mental-spiritual nature suffering during life and not the condition after death. The heart finds no rest even at night, so earthly human existence is far from happy. People do not escape this trouble until death, when God changes the countenance and sends him away. Because of suffering during life's few days, the grave was thought desirable.
No one is exempt, for every man is born into a world of trouble with no exception. People of every age and station, whether righteous or sinful, die and return to dust, and all ranks and conditions meet in death in the grave. Earthly beauty, power, wisdom, and affection do not exempt anyone. Sorrow, heartache, affliction, pain, bereavement, sickness, despair, and death touch everyone. Even the most devoted, humble, and patient servants of God suffer affliction and sometimes suffer most.
Life can end quickly and suddenly. Even youth just beginning to realize life, when hope is budding and expanding toward pleasure and happy life, is cut off suddenly and unexpectedly. The end comes like a blossom cut down and like a fleeting shadow that does not continue, returning to dust as grass withers. This includes children taken by sickness, as at thirteen years of age, and a young son in delicate health, and a thirteen-year-old girl after great suffering borne without murmur or complaint.
Mortal Nature and Cause
The brevity and trouble of human life follow sin, for death entered by one man and passed upon all because all have sinned. Death is the wages of sin and the finished product that lust-conceived sin brings forth. This condition comes from a sinful nature inherited from Adam, which the race cannot rise above by itself, so that all are under sentence of death and life from birth runs toward the grave. After a short span a person dies and returns to dust, passing like a flower that is cut down or a shadow that does not last. The life so described is marked by death, sorrow, pain, and loss as signs of the curse, for people are brought forth in sin in this fallen world.
Mortal means subject to decay, death, and extinction, while immortal means not subject to death or decay and incorruptible. Only God, the King of kings and Lord of lords, has inherent immortality and continuance of existence. Adam could transmit to his posterity no higher nature than he himself possessed, so the life given to Adam and passed on to humanity is temporary. Human life springs up only to be quickly cut off and passes like a shadow that does not remain, ending in the grave rather than going to heaven at death.
The brief troubled life is the carnal, natural, animal life inherent in the natural man. That natural life is sustained by material food and is distinct from the spiritual life that is sustained and increased by the Word of God. It is not the abundant life that comes through faith in Christ, since those who already possess ordinary animal life must still come to Christ to have true life. Yet the temporary life gives opportunity to seek eternal life through Christ the divine Life-Giver.
Man is a single mortal unit of few days and full of trouble, and mortality belongs to the whole man. He was dust before the breath of life and only man afterward, and remains man in death with the vital functions ceased. If part of man were immortal all would be immortal, and if part dies all parts die, since no exception is made for any surviving principle. The man born of woman is the flesh-born natural man, the whole man by nature composed of matter and spirit, not flesh alone without spirit. That same single man born of woman is the man who must be born again; that born of flesh is flesh, a natural body, while those born from the dead, quickened by the indwelling Spirit and having put on incorruption to enter the kingdom, will be spirit, a spiritual body which is still body.
Christ became a true human being, lived an ordinary lifetime in the flesh, and experienced the ills and troubles that fall to people born of women. He also endured reproach, shame, and anguish, fitting Him to sympathize with people in distress.
Death and Resurrection Hope
Man born of woman lives only a few days full of trouble, anxiety and care, comes forth like a flower and is cut down, flees as a shadow and continues not. In death he dieth and wasteth away, giveth up the ghost, lieth down in the grave and riseth not till the heavens be no more, cut down to appear no more among the living and among his kind. His life is entirely snuffed out with no spark left from which to kindle himself anew, unlike a tree hewn down whose root life can replace the first growth and sprout again. Having forfeited even the renewal power nature gives the trees of the forest, he waits in the dust until the appointed time.
The dead are unconscious and have nothing more to do with the affairs of this world, not even knowing when their own sons come to honor or are brought low and not perceiving it. Death is sleep in the dust, marked by silence and darkness, where after a little while the heart stops and rests and the dead are left alone. They are spoken of for a short time and then forgotten as the concerns of life return, while generation after generation passes like a vapor and nature keeps the same beauty given at creation. Days move on, laughter and song return to the room where they died, mourning eyes dry and shine again with joy, and even their children stop thinking of them and no longer speak their names.
Job prays to be hidden in Sheol, the Hebrew word rendered hell and grave, exactly equivalent to Hades, signifying the place of the dead, the invisible world, the common receptacle of all mankind in death whether righteous or wicked, not the place of punishment. There the dead wait hidden and kept secret until a set and appointed time to be remembered and raised out of sleep. Once life is yielded up, a person cannot restore it by his own power, and if he lives after passing off this life it must be through power outside himself. That power God supplies by calling and his answering and receiving his change after waiting all the days of his appointed time, while in this state of waiting his flesh suffers pain and his soul mourns.
In the surrounding verses Job asks whether a person who dies can live again and expresses faith that he will wait for God's appointed time, when God calls and he answers. After decay he will see his living Redeemer when awakened from that sleep, and his Redeemer's life makes resurrection life certain. Human beings are mortal, subject to sin and death, brief and troubled like a passing vapor, and their only hope of life is resurrection through Christ. This denies the claim that death is not death but budding forth into eternal life, that nothing in man can die, that the dead live on beyond the grave in heaven, and that man goes to heaven at death; man ends in the grave. Nature affords no proof of life beyond the grave and logic stands against it, raising the question whether such a brief life is the whole of eternity's plan for a creature endowed with comprehensive and inventive faculties far above every other living being.
Doctrine and Other Scripture
The unrestricted noun in the verse denotes the entire human family in its broadest extension, every being bearing the name, both Jews and Gentiles, every person born of a woman as subject to few days, trouble, death and judgment. A noun without a limiting adjective is to be taken in its widest sense, and the verse illustrates that grammatical rule. Therefore the same word in the Sabbath command and in Mark 2:27 means all mankind, and the Sabbath made for man was made for Adam as head of the human family and for the whole race.
Present life is brief and troubled, cut down and brought to an end for righteous and wicked alike, of few days and full of trouble like a shadow that does not continue and like a flower cut down, appearing for a little time and then vanishing away. This earth in its present state is a world of thorns and thistles, trouble and sorrow, sickness and death and burial, where the prince of the power of the air rules and time is occupied battling his assaults to overthrow, as strangers and pilgrims having no home nor continuing city. Life here blooms for a short season with youthful beauty and passing pleasures, then beauty passes, old age bows the body, cheeks are furrowed, heads are gray, limbs are filled with pains, and the Christian enjoys the work of his hands only a short time. Hence the long days promised to those honoring father and mother, and the promises that the righteous shall remain in the land and never be removed and shall long enjoy the work of their hands, cannot describe this earth and are not the promised land. They refer to the life to come on the restored earth in the immortal state, where the curse is removed, the righteous never grow old nor say I am sick, and God satisfies them with long life and shows them His salvation.
Mortal people live finite lives bringing sorrow, grief, pain, abuse and disappointment, and that brevity stands against the claim that the wicked suffer endlessly.
The man born of woman is the flesh-born natural man, the whole single man by nature composed of matter and spirit, not flesh alone without spirit. That same one man is the one who must be born again, not two men with flesh born at one time and spirit born at another. That born of flesh is flesh, a natural body, while those born from the dead, quickened by the indwelling Spirit and having put on incorruption to enter the kingdom of God, will be spirit, a spiritual body which is still body.
Comfort and Christian Living
Man born of woman lives only a short time full of trouble, and this truth belongs at funerals as comfort and gospel instruction. It fits the death of a faithful believer in middle age after painful disease, and the death of the elderly, and the death of children taken by sickness. It was spoken over a young son who had lived in delicate health, and over a thirteen-year-old girl who died after great suffering borne without murmur or complaint before a large grieving company. It was spoken even over a young woman who had made no profession of religion, whose final standing is left to God who knows the heart. With it goes the hope of resting in sleep until the Life-giver calls and awakens to resurrection, and for the believer who looks for the soon return of Jesus that sleep is expected to last only a short time.
Life so brief is cut off suddenly and unexpectedly, like a blossom cut down and like a fleeting shadow that does not continue, withering like grass and returning to dust, even when youth is just beginning to realize life and hope is budding and expanding toward pleasure and happy living. Because God loves all his creatures and does all things well and notices even the fall of a sparrow, such affliction and loss gives no cause to mourn and repine or to charge folly to the Maker. Such affliction should instead draw the bereaved family nearer to the Lord and nearer to one another. The same brevity and trouble mark the changes that come during life, which need not be feared by one who trusts God with his times.
Every person is born into a world of trouble with no exception, and trouble belongs especially to the Christian life. God may use affliction to test and humble and correct and purify and save, and sometimes to bring glory to himself. Hardship grinds a man as if to powder in order to bring him to the full stature of manhood, for men are made not by soft velvet handling but by hard stone and iron handling. The lesson therefore is not to grumble about troubles but to conquer them. Through sorrow and heartache and affliction and death, trust in God brings peace instead of being overcome by worry.
Life here on earth is short and full of trouble and sin and sorrow, spent chasing fading flowers and perishing treasures and sinking hopes and sighing songs and delusive bubbles that end in gloom. Pleasure and joy pursued apart from God, whether in riches or fame or pleasure or in man and what man has done, is folly and a thing of naught whose joy lasts only a moment. In that short troubled life such seeking ends in weariness and tears and disappointment, and sometimes in despair and death. Set directly against it stands life there with Christ the King, where there are no fears or sighs or sin or sorrow, but unfading bloom and the eternal tree of life and everlasting pleasures and length of days at God's right hand, where the pure in heart see God and stand near him and ransomed souls inherit prepared mansions.
That contrast calls for awaking from groveling in sin and forsaking sin and laying up treasure in heaven and preparing now for those mansions instead of abiding in a wretched earthly hovel. The life to come is eternal and full of glory, and is therefore to be valued above this world, with spiritual interests guarded and time and means used in service to God. The portrayal of life as fleeting urges readiness for death.
Man born of woman means every human being lives a short life filled with sorrow, anxiety and pain, fleeting and fragile like a flower cut down and a shadow that flees away. This mortality came through sin inherited from Adam, for by nature man is subject to decay and death while only God possesses immortality in himself. Death is real and total, a sleep of unconscious silence in the dust, in Sheol the common grave of all mankind where the dead wait hidden until an appointed time. No one can restore his own life, so the only hope is to wait for God to call and give change through resurrection by Christ the living Redeemer. The temporary life therefore gives opportunity to come to Christ for spiritual life, forsake sin, and prepare now for eternal life in the immortal state to come.
Words and Context
The unqualified noun for man denotes mankind in its broadest sense, the whole human race and the whole human family, and every person in that class, not Jews only or Christians only and not one particular person. The Hebrew word for man in the verse is adam, the same word used for the man who gives up the ghost and for the man who turns to dust, and there is no difference in meaning between adam and the other Hebrew words translated man in the chapter. If adam meant only the spiritual part of man, then that spiritual part itself would have human birth and would return to dust.
Being born of woman marks human life as beginning with birth and as inherited through Eve, who was named Life after the fall, and it presents human weakness and mortality as realities, including the fact that people grow old. That brief troubled existence stands in contrast with the unending life that comes through Christ, who is life. The life that follows is short and marked by trouble, anxiety, and care.
The connected images of a flower that comes forth and is cut down and of a shadow that flees and does not continue present life as fleeting and fragile. Life passes from infancy and youth to old age as quickly as a flower blossoms, flourishes, and is soon cut down, and people vanish like shadows. A person's allotted life is like a thread that is spun out and then ends, like flowers withering, like newly sprung grass, like a bird gone in a day, like an hour or a span of time, like a dream, a spark, a vapor, and a leaf through spring, summer, and autumn, passing from life to the grave where all ranks and conditions meet in death. In its context this brevity supports the point that the dead have no awareness of events in this life, not knowing whether their children are honored or brought low.
The verse belongs to the book of Job, which presents the problems of human suffering, sin, and God's providence in poetic treatment and presents Job as a real person. Job's affliction is a discipline through which God brings him, not proof of the sin his friends wrongly accuse him of, and his trial and patience teach that suffering does not necessarily mean God is displeased with the sufferer. People are prone to misjudge others in the same way Job's friends misjudged him. The chapter is associated with concern about the future of deceased friends.
Brief Troubled Life
Human life is of few days and full of trouble, anxiety, and care. This is proved true by every human being to a greater or less extent. Like a flower that comes forth and is cut down and like a passing shadow that does not continue, a person does not continue in this life. The brevity and affliction frame the question whether a person who dies will live again.
The trouble belongs to this life while people wait for their change to come. While in this state the flesh has pain and the soul within mourns, which is the physical and mental-spiritual nature suffering during life and not the condition after death. The heart finds no rest even at night, so earthly human existence is far from happy. People do not escape this trouble until death, when God changes the countenance and sends him away. Because of suffering during life's few days, the grave was thought desirable.
No one is exempt, for every man is born into a world of trouble with no exception. People of every age and station, whether righteous or sinful, die and return to dust, and all ranks and conditions meet in death in the grave. Earthly beauty, power, wisdom, and affection do not exempt anyone. Sorrow, heartache, affliction, pain, bereavement, sickness, despair, and death touch everyone. Even the most devoted, humble, and patient servants of God suffer affliction and sometimes suffer most.
Life can end quickly and suddenly. Even youth just beginning to realize life, when hope is budding and expanding toward pleasure and happy life, is cut off suddenly and unexpectedly. The end comes like a blossom cut down and like a fleeting shadow that does not continue, returning to dust as grass withers. This includes children taken by sickness, as at thirteen years of age, and a young son in delicate health, and a thirteen-year-old girl after great suffering borne without murmur or complaint.
Mortal Nature and Cause
The brevity and trouble of human life follow sin, for death entered by one man and passed upon all because all have sinned. Death is the wages of sin and the finished product that lust-conceived sin brings forth. This condition comes from a sinful nature inherited from Adam, which the race cannot rise above by itself, so that all are under sentence of death and life from birth runs toward the grave. After a short span a person dies and returns to dust, passing like a flower that is cut down or a shadow that does not last. The life so described is marked by death, sorrow, pain, and loss as signs of the curse, for people are brought forth in sin in this fallen world.
Mortal means subject to decay, death, and extinction, while immortal means not subject to death or decay and incorruptible. Only God, the King of kings and Lord of lords, has inherent immortality and continuance of existence. Adam could transmit to his posterity no higher nature than he himself possessed, so the life given to Adam and passed on to humanity is temporary. Human life springs up only to be quickly cut off and passes like a shadow that does not remain, ending in the grave rather than going to heaven at death.
The brief troubled life is the carnal, natural, animal life inherent in the natural man. That natural life is sustained by material food and is distinct from the spiritual life that is sustained and increased by the Word of God. It is not the abundant life that comes through faith in Christ, since those who already possess ordinary animal life must still come to Christ to have true life. Yet the temporary life gives opportunity to seek eternal life through Christ the divine Life-Giver.
Man is a single mortal unit of few days and full of trouble, and mortality belongs to the whole man. He was dust before the breath of life and only man afterward, and remains man in death with the vital functions ceased. If part of man were immortal all would be immortal, and if part dies all parts die, since no exception is made for any surviving principle. The man born of woman is the flesh-born natural man, the whole man by nature composed of matter and spirit, not flesh alone without spirit. That same single man born of woman is the man who must be born again; that born of flesh is flesh, a natural body, while those born from the dead, quickened by the indwelling Spirit and having put on incorruption to enter the kingdom, will be spirit, a spiritual body which is still body.
Christ became a true human being, lived an ordinary lifetime in the flesh, and experienced the ills and troubles that fall to people born of women. He also endured reproach, shame, and anguish, fitting Him to sympathize with people in distress.
Death and Resurrection Hope
Man born of woman lives only a few days full of trouble, anxiety and care, comes forth like a flower and is cut down, flees as a shadow and continues not. In death he dieth and wasteth away, giveth up the ghost, lieth down in the grave and riseth not till the heavens be no more, cut down to appear no more among the living and among his kind. His life is entirely snuffed out with no spark left from which to kindle himself anew, unlike a tree hewn down whose root life can replace the first growth and sprout again. Having forfeited even the renewal power nature gives the trees of the forest, he waits in the dust until the appointed time.
The dead are unconscious and have nothing more to do with the affairs of this world, not even knowing when their own sons come to honor or are brought low and not perceiving it. Death is sleep in the dust, marked by silence and darkness, where after a little while the heart stops and rests and the dead are left alone. They are spoken of for a short time and then forgotten as the concerns of life return, while generation after generation passes like a vapor and nature keeps the same beauty given at creation. Days move on, laughter and song return to the room where they died, mourning eyes dry and shine again with joy, and even their children stop thinking of them and no longer speak their names.
Job prays to be hidden in Sheol, the Hebrew word rendered hell and grave, exactly equivalent to Hades, signifying the place of the dead, the invisible world, the common receptacle of all mankind in death whether righteous or wicked, not the place of punishment. There the dead wait hidden and kept secret until a set and appointed time to be remembered and raised out of sleep. Once life is yielded up, a person cannot restore it by his own power, and if he lives after passing off this life it must be through power outside himself. That power God supplies by calling and his answering and receiving his change after waiting all the days of his appointed time, while in this state of waiting his flesh suffers pain and his soul mourns.
In the surrounding verses Job asks whether a person who dies can live again and expresses faith that he will wait for God's appointed time, when God calls and he answers. After decay he will see his living Redeemer when awakened from that sleep, and his Redeemer's life makes resurrection life certain. Human beings are mortal, subject to sin and death, brief and troubled like a passing vapor, and their only hope of life is resurrection through Christ. This denies the claim that death is not death but budding forth into eternal life, that nothing in man can die, that the dead live on beyond the grave in heaven, and that man goes to heaven at death; man ends in the grave. Nature affords no proof of life beyond the grave and logic stands against it, raising the question whether such a brief life is the whole of eternity's plan for a creature endowed with comprehensive and inventive faculties far above every other living being.
Doctrine and Other Scripture
The unrestricted noun in the verse denotes the entire human family in its broadest extension, every being bearing the name, both Jews and Gentiles, every person born of a woman as subject to few days, trouble, death and judgment. A noun without a limiting adjective is to be taken in its widest sense, and the verse illustrates that grammatical rule. Therefore the same word in the Sabbath command and in Mark 2:27 means all mankind, and the Sabbath made for man was made for Adam as head of the human family and for the whole race.
Present life is brief and troubled, cut down and brought to an end for righteous and wicked alike, of few days and full of trouble like a shadow that does not continue and like a flower cut down, appearing for a little time and then vanishing away. This earth in its present state is a world of thorns and thistles, trouble and sorrow, sickness and death and burial, where the prince of the power of the air rules and time is occupied battling his assaults to overthrow, as strangers and pilgrims having no home nor continuing city. Life here blooms for a short season with youthful beauty and passing pleasures, then beauty passes, old age bows the body, cheeks are furrowed, heads are gray, limbs are filled with pains, and the Christian enjoys the work of his hands only a short time. Hence the long days promised to those honoring father and mother, and the promises that the righteous shall remain in the land and never be removed and shall long enjoy the work of their hands, cannot describe this earth and are not the promised land. They refer to the life to come on the restored earth in the immortal state, where the curse is removed, the righteous never grow old nor say I am sick, and God satisfies them with long life and shows them His salvation.
Mortal people live finite lives bringing sorrow, grief, pain, abuse and disappointment, and that brevity stands against the claim that the wicked suffer endlessly.
The man born of woman is the flesh-born natural man, the whole single man by nature composed of matter and spirit, not flesh alone without spirit. That same one man is the one who must be born again, not two men with flesh born at one time and spirit born at another. That born of flesh is flesh, a natural body, while those born from the dead, quickened by the indwelling Spirit and having put on incorruption to enter the kingdom of God, will be spirit, a spiritual body which is still body.
Comfort and Christian Living
Man born of woman lives only a short time full of trouble, and this truth belongs at funerals as comfort and gospel instruction. It fits the death of a faithful believer in middle age after painful disease, and the death of the elderly, and the death of children taken by sickness. It was spoken over a young son who had lived in delicate health, and over a thirteen-year-old girl who died after great suffering borne without murmur or complaint before a large grieving company. It was spoken even over a young woman who had made no profession of religion, whose final standing is left to God who knows the heart. With it goes the hope of resting in sleep until the Life-giver calls and awakens to resurrection, and for the believer who looks for the soon return of Jesus that sleep is expected to last only a short time.
Life so brief is cut off suddenly and unexpectedly, like a blossom cut down and like a fleeting shadow that does not continue, withering like grass and returning to dust, even when youth is just beginning to realize life and hope is budding and expanding toward pleasure and happy living. Because God loves all his creatures and does all things well and notices even the fall of a sparrow, such affliction and loss gives no cause to mourn and repine or to charge folly to the Maker. Such affliction should instead draw the bereaved family nearer to the Lord and nearer to one another. The same brevity and trouble mark the changes that come during life, which need not be feared by one who trusts God with his times.
Every person is born into a world of trouble with no exception, and trouble belongs especially to the Christian life. God may use affliction to test and humble and correct and purify and save, and sometimes to bring glory to himself. Hardship grinds a man as if to powder in order to bring him to the full stature of manhood, for men are made not by soft velvet handling but by hard stone and iron handling. The lesson therefore is not to grumble about troubles but to conquer them. Through sorrow and heartache and affliction and death, trust in God brings peace instead of being overcome by worry.
Life here on earth is short and full of trouble and sin and sorrow, spent chasing fading flowers and perishing treasures and sinking hopes and sighing songs and delusive bubbles that end in gloom. Pleasure and joy pursued apart from God, whether in riches or fame or pleasure or in man and what man has done, is folly and a thing of naught whose joy lasts only a moment. In that short troubled life such seeking ends in weariness and tears and disappointment, and sometimes in despair and death. Set directly against it stands life there with Christ the King, where there are no fears or sighs or sin or sorrow, but unfading bloom and the eternal tree of life and everlasting pleasures and length of days at God's right hand, where the pure in heart see God and stand near him and ransomed souls inherit prepared mansions.
That contrast calls for awaking from groveling in sin and forsaking sin and laying up treasure in heaven and preparing now for those mansions instead of abiding in a wretched earthly hovel. The life to come is eternal and full of glory, and is therefore to be valued above this world, with spiritual interests guarded and time and means used in service to God. The portrayal of life as fleeting urges readiness for death.