He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down - Nothing can be more obvious and more beautiful than this, and the image has been employed by writers in all ages, but nowhere with more beauty, or with more frequency than in the Bible; see Isaiah 40:6; Psalm 37:2; Psalm 90:6; Psalm 103:15. Next to the Bible, it is probable that Shakespeare has employed the image with the most exquisite beauty of any poet:
This is the state of man; today he puts forth
The tender leaves of hope, tomorrow blossoms,
And bears his blushing honors thick upon him;
The third day comes a frost a killing frost,
And - when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
His greatness is a ripening - nips his root,
And then he falls.
Henry viii. Acts iii. Sc. 2.
He fleeth also as a shadow - Another exquisite figure, and as true as it is beautiful. So the Psalmist:
My days are like a shadow that declineth.
Psalm 102:11.
Man is like to vanity;
His days are as a shadowy that passeth away.
Psalm 144:4.
The idea of Job is, that there is no substance, nothing that is permanent. A shadow moves on gently and silently, and is soon gone. It leaves no trace of its being, and returns no more. They who have watched the beautiful shadow of a cloud on a landscape, and have seen how rapidly it passes ever meadows and fields of grain, and rolls up the mountain side and disappears, will have a vivid conception of this figure. How gently yet how rapidly it moves. How soon it is gone. How void of impression is its course. Who can track its way; who can reach it? So man moves on. Soon he is gone; he leaves no trace of his being, and returns no more.

He cometh forth like a flower - This is a frequent image both in the Old and New Testament writers; I need not quote the places here, as the readers will find them all in the margin.
He fleeth also as a shadow - Himself, as he appears among men, is only the shadow of his real, substantial, and eternal being. He is here compared to a vegetable; he springs up, bears his flower is often nipped by disease, blasted by afflictions and at last cut down by death. The bloom of youth, even in the most prosperous state, is only the forerunner of hoary hairs, enfeebled muscles, impaired senses, general debility, anility, and dissolution. All these images are finely embodied, and happily expressed, in the beautiful lines of a very nervous and correct poet, too little known, but whose compositions deserve the first place among what may be called the minor poets of Britain. See at the end of the chapter, Job 14:22 (note).

He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down,.... As the flower comes from the earth, so does man; as it comes out of the stalk, so man out of his mother's womb; as the flower flourishes for a while, and looks gay and beautiful, so man while in youth, in health and prosperity. Job, doubtless, has respect to his own case before his troubles came upon him, when he was possessed of all that substance, which made him the greatest man of the east; when his children were like olive plants around his table, and his servants at his command, and he in perfect health of body: and as a flower flourishes for a little while, and then withers; no sooner is it come to its full blow, but presently decays; such is the goodliness of man, it fades away whenever God blows a blast upon it; yea, he is easily and quickly cut down by death, like a beautiful flower cut with the knife, or cropped by the hand, or trampled upon by the foot, see Psalm 103:15;
he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not; either as the shadow of the evening, which is lost when night comes on; or the shadow on a dial plate, which is continually moving on; or, as the Jewish Rabbins say, as the shadow of a bird flying, which stays not, whereas the shadow of a wall, or of a tree, continues: a shadow is an empty thing, without substance, dark and obscure, variable and uncertain, declining, fleeting, and passing away; and so fitly resembles the life of a man, which is but a vapour, a bubble, yea, as nothing with God; is full of darkness, of ignorance, and of adversity, very fickle, changeable, and inconstant, and at most but of a short continuance.

(Psalm 90:6; see on Job 8:9).

Flower - The flower is fading, and all its beauty soon withers and is gone. The shadow is fleeting, and its very being will soon be lost in the shadows of night. Of neither do we make any account, in neither do we put any confidence.