What does Job Chapter 14 say, and which statements belong to its speaker?

Job reflects mournfully on the fragility of human existence, observing that man born of woman lives only a short time and is filled with abundant miseries. Emerging like a delicate flower only to wither, and fleeing like a fleeting shadow without ever remaining in one state, Job asks who can make clean one conceived of unclean seed, and whether it is not God alone. He questions why God deigns to open His eyes upon so weak a creature and summon him into judicial reckoning. Because God has strictly determined the brevity of human days and set insurmountable boundaries that no mortal can cross, Job pleads for a brief reprieve from divine scrutiny so a weary laborer may enjoy a moment of rest before his appointed end. While a felled tree retains hope of putting forth green shoots and new foliage at the mere scent of water even when its roots are old in the earth and its stock dead in the dust, Job contrasts this with man: once dead, consumed, and stripped of life, man lies asleep like an emptied river or dried seabed, unable to awake or arise until the very heavens are shattered.

In Job’s continuing speech, yearning for divine shelter from wrath, Job longs that God would hide and protect him in the realm of the dead until the storm of anger passes, appointing a definitive time to remember him. Contemplating whether a dead man might live again, Job resolves to endure all the days of his earthly warfare expecting his change, anticipating the moment when God will call and he will answer, as the Creator reaches out His right hand toward the work of His hands. He says God has numbered his steps and asks Him to spare his sins, then says his offenses have been sealed in a bag but his iniquity cured. The edition’s separate heading describes belief in a resurrection; its note explains protection in hell as the state of the dead where souls await their Redeemer. Yet alongside this expectation, Job laments the relentless wear of divine judgment: just as mountains crumble, rocks shift from their foundations, and flowing waters erode solid stones, so Job says God destroys man, altering his countenance and sending him away forever into death. Job says the man will not know whether his children come to honor or dishonor. The final line places fleshly pain while the man lives and says his soul mourns over him.