Job 14:7 · World English Bible
Job 14:7 Meaning For There Is Hope for a Tree
For there is hope for a tree if it is cut down, that it will sprout again, that the tender branch of it will not cease.
What does Job 14:7 mean?
Taṇhā: Craving Craving is the sap still climbing inside a stump that refuses to die. " As long as the wanting stays green and wet in the wood, some new growth will always break the soil and reach for the light.
From the Buddhism reading below.
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The same verse, read by one tradition.
Buddhism
BUDDHISM
Buddhism
Taṇhā: Craving Craving is the sap still climbing inside a stump that refuses to die. Fell a whole life down to the ground, and this thirst keeps forcing fresh shoots up from below, which is why the tender branch "will not cease." As long as the wanting stays green and wet in the wood, some new growth will always break the soil and reach for the light.
Anusaya: Latent tendency Beneath the cut, the old roots lie whole and asleep, still gripping the dark soil. A stump throws up green only because these buried leanings were left in the ground, firm and patient under the axe. Clear away every branch and twig you can reach, and the hidden roots quietly send the tender branch back up with the next warm spring.
Punabbhava: Renewed becoming Renewed becoming is the shoot climbing up as the same life wearing a new shape. The green on the old stump is one round of living handed straight to the next, sap poured out of the fallen trunk and into the rising branch. To sprout again is this handing-on, growth passed forward so the bare ground never stays bare for long.
Saṃsāra: The turning round Saṃsāra is the wheel that keeps swinging back around: cut, sprout, grow, and cut once more. The tree turns this circle with no end in sight, and the branch that "will not cease" is precisely that ceaselessness at work. Every fresh shoot it lifts is also the quiet promise of the next axe, the same round that carries a life through birth after birth after birth.
Nibbāna: The fire going out Here the hope quietly turns over: the peace the heart is after is the spring when the roots have rotted through and no shoot rises at all. Dig the craving out from under the stump, and the ground falls silent, not barren but at last at rest. The tender branch that "would not cease" is finally set down, and nothing green is left to cut.
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Live Job 14:7 today
- Watch what your thumb reaches for when you unlock your phone with nothing in particular to do. The reaching is the sap, and you can let it come up without following it.
- When someone tells you about a habit they keep returning to, do not hand them a tip for cutting the branch. Ask what it is giving them, because something down there is still green.
- In the hour when you most want the thing, the scroll, the drink, the snack, the win, wait two minutes without doing anything about it. Not to prove something. Just to see the shoot push up and feel that it passes.
What keeps growing back in you, and what is still alive underneath to feed it?
The same truth in other traditions
Bhagavad Gita 15
The world appears as a tree with its roots above and its branches spreading down, and the instruction is to take an axe to the root. Trimming the branches was never going to be enough.
Tao Te Ching 46
There is no worse trouble than wanting that cannot be filled, and no greater wealth than knowing when you have enough. Cut the wanting and the trouble has nothing to grow from.
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