He comes forth like a flower, and is cut down: he flees also as a shadow, and continues not.
All Commentaries on Job 14:2 Go To Job 14
Hesychius of Jerusalem
AD 433
Man, who is born of a woman, “has a short life,” because he has been ordered to return to the earth. With regard to the expression “full of wrath,” Job thinks about that moment in which man received the order to observe the commandment but transgressed it. And therefore “like a flower that has finished blooming, he fell after being shaken”; he bloomed in paradise, so that he imposed a name on every animal. But “he fell after being shaken,” when Adam was enticed into the deception of the dragon. At that stage “he fled like a shadow,” because, being naked, he concealed himself away from God and hid under a tree of the paradise. When God called him, “Adam, where are you?” he did not show up.… Therefore our hope was destroyed. Since he had fallen from paradise, man was deprived of his goods and perished completely, because with a single blow he was condemned as someone who had fallen, without any possibility for us to hope of judgment. In fact, if there is hope for judgment, there is also hope for crowns.
