Job 30

25. A concluding picture of the joy which he had in the fellowship of men, and how they recognized his worth and set him as a king among them, and yet how he with his high advantages and great wealth felt toward them, being among them as one that comforteth the mourning. A. B. D.

The Book of Job is among the oldest books in the world; and for this reason alone it would be of great value and interest for its pictures of primitive society in Arabia, and as a repository of early thought upon nature and the problems of life. The venerable patriarch, with his vast possessions, his large family, his numerous retinue, yet living in a grand simplicity, and more honored for his virtue than his wealth; the protector of the poor, the friend of the widow and the fatherless, the judge of the city, “unto whom men gave ear, and waited, and kept silence at his counsel”—such a picture is unsurpassed by Homer for vivid beauty. J. P. T.

1. But now they that are younger than I have me in derision,

Whose fathers I disdained to set with the dogs of my flock.

2. Yea, the strength of their hands, whereto should it profit me?

Men in whom ripe age is perished.

3. They are gaunt with want and famine;

They gnaw the dry ground, in the gloom of wasteness and desolation.

4. They pluck salt-wort by the bushes;

And the roots of the broom are their meat.

5. They are driven forth from the midst of men;

They cry after them as after a thief.

6. In the clefts of the valleys must they dwell, In holes of the earth and of the rocks.

7. Among the bushes they bray;

Under the nettles they are gathered together.

8. They are children of fools, yea, children of base men;

They were scourged out of the land.

9. And now I am become their song,

Yea, I am a byword unto them.

10. They abhor me, they stand aloof from me, And spare not to spit in my face.

11. For he hath loosed his cord, and afflicted me,

And they have cast off the bridle before me.

12. Upon my right hand rise the rabble;

They thrust aside my feet,

And they cast up against me their ways of destruction.

13. They mar my path,

They set forward my calamity,

Eccn men that have no helper.

14. As through a wide breach they come:

In the midst of the ruin they roll themselves upon me.

15. Terrors are turned upon me,

They chase mine honour as the wind;

And my welfare is passed away as a cloud.

16. And now my soul is poured out within me;

Days of affliction have taken hold upon me.

17. In the night season my bones are pierced in me,

And the pains that gnaw me take no rest.

18. By the great force of my disease is my garment disfigured:

It bindeth me about as the collar of my coat.

19. He hath cast me into the mire,

And I am become like dust and ashes.

20. I cry unto thee, and thou dost not answer me:

I stand up, and thou lookest at me.

21. Thou art turned to be cruel to me:

With the might of thy hand thou persecutest me.

22. Thou liftest me up to the wind, thou causest me to ride upon it;

And thou dissolvest me in the storm.

23. For I know that thou wilt bring me to death,

And to the house appointed for all living.

24. Surely against a ruinous heap he will not put forth his hand;

Though it be in his destruction, one may utter a cry because of these things.

25. Did not I weep for him that was in trouble?

Was not my soul grieved for the needy?

26. When I looked for good, then evil came;

And when I waited for light, there came darkness.

27. My bowels boil, and rest not; Days of affliction are come upon me.

28. I go mourning without the sun: I stand up in the assembly, and cry for help.

THIS chapter forms a contrast to chap. 29; and, as in that picture of Job’s past felicity the brightest part was the high respect he enjoyed among men—sitting as a prince in the midst of them—so in this, the darkest part is the contumely and indignity he suffers from the basest and most abject of mankind. Chap. 29 ended with a reference to his former high place among men, and the present chapter starts with the antithesis to this, the contempt in which the base-born races now hold him. The subjects touched upon in the chapter are the same as those in chap. 29, though they are pursued in the reverse order. A. B. D.—The two pictures, looked at in succession, show the changes to which the sufferer had been subjected, and of which he complained. Viewed in connection with the harsh judgments of his friends, the comparison becomes Job’s apology for his impatience and the bitterness with which he arraigned God Himself. Curry.

Job’s last bitter outcry. Formerly a prince among nobles he is now despised by the vilest of men (vs. 1-10); insults are heaped on him simply because he is afflicted of God (vs. 11-14). The afflictions reach him on all sides, from within and from without; his soul is full of terrors and anguish, his body consumed and tortured, he is cast into the dust (vs. 15-19). The greatest of all miseries is that his prayers are still unheard, that God is cruel to him (vs. 20-22). So he despairs of life (vs. 23, 24); yet Job had ever been compassionate and pitiful (v. 25), and looked for good and light (26), but is now reduced to bitter and ceaseless lamentations (27-31). Cook.

The section (vs. 1-14) appears to be a strong and spirited description of those villainous Arabs who, when Job was in his prosperity, had felt the severity of his justice and fled into the lurking-places of the desert. Upon the loss of his authority, these miscreants came to revenge themselves upon him by the most scurrilous abuse. In drawing their character he insists much on the misery of their habitation and way of living, as circumstances very expressive of the turpitude and barbarity of their manners. Scott.

11-15. Though no longer heated by the

29. I am a brother to jackals, And a companion to ostriches. 30 My skin is black, and falleth from me, And my bones are burned with heat 31 Therefore is my harp turned to mourning, And my pipe into the voice of them that weep.

strife of the conflict with his would-be comforters, Job still persists in recognizing God as the cause of his sufferings. He has “loosed his cord”—has afflicted him, and given loose reins to his adversaries. The miscreants at whose hands he suffers the insults of which he complains are the instruments of a higher hand. Curry.—Job had been in such a way given over to be mocked by the most wretched, because God and the Divine powers which cause calamity had delivered him over to the same. For these are the principal subjects in vs. 11-14, not those miserable outcasts of human society just spoken of. Zöckler.

15. Schultens observes that it is usual with the Arabian writers to compare hopes and promises which are not fulfilled, to a cloud which raises expectation of a plentiful shower, but is presently dispersed by the wind. In the parched country of Arabia we may see the propriety and force of this comparison. Scott.

16,17. Job now returns to the contemplation of his own wretchedness—his very soul is “poured out”—a figure strikingly expressive of the weakening, dissolving influence of deep and long-continued sorrow. He has become the helpless and unresisting subject of long-continued afflictions which now thoroughly possess him. Curry.

18. Because the body is wasted away to a skeleton there is an end to the rich appearance and beautiful flow which the outer garments gain by the full and rounded forms of the limbs; it falls down straight, in perpendicular folds, upon the wasted body, and contributes in no small degree to make him whom one formerly saw in all the fulness of health still less recognizable. Bindeth me is not merely the falling together of the outer garment which was formerly filled out by the members of the body, but its appearance when the sick man wraps himself in it; then it girds him, fits close to him like his shirt collar, lying round his shrivelled figure like the other about a thin neck. D.

20. Job represents the Almighty as looking on calm and pitiless, when he stands holding out his hands in prayer. Cook—That God did not appear for him cut him to the heart more than anything else. He addressed himself to Him, but gained no grant; appealed to Him, but gained no sentence; he was very importunate in his applications, but in vain. “I cry unto Thee as one in earnest, I stand up and cry, as one waiting for an answer, but Thou hearest not, Thou regardest not, for anything I can perceive.” If our most fervent prayers bring not in speedy and sensible returns, we must not think it strange. Though the seed of Jacob did never seek in vain, yet they have often thought that they did. H.

20-23. Here his feeling almost gets the mastery of the speaker, so that it is only with difficulty that he can restrain himself; the speaking of God changes into a direct address to Him. If after the first vain complaint he remains standing without getting calmer, if he waits therefore, then God resents it; yea, becomes a cruel, pursuing enemy, causes him, when he has been lifted up by violence to ride away and perish in the wind and storm, as if death had already seized him to carry him away. Ewald.—Job thus retains the conviction which he has all along expressed, that his sufferings will only end with death. The absolute abandonment of all earthly hope was the real condition of his trial. It was important that it should be recorded here, in his last discourse, immediately before his final vindication of his former life, and his determination under all circumstances to appeal to God Himself for judgment (31:35) and to hold fast to His righteousness. Cook.

23. Thou wilt bring me to death. It is a solemn thought that, more surely than that any one of us will lie down to sleep tonight or rise from sleep to-morrow, each one of us will have to pass through, separately and alone, that act of dying, and that state of death, of which there is no one to tell us either the nature or the consequences. No one comes back from death to enlighten us as to its essence; and if such a return were ordained for any, he could not make us understand; he could not put us, in imagination or in knowledge, in the place which each one must occupy some day by actual experience. Such a prospect is serious; only a fool can despise it. The fear of death is the natural feeling; and from that fear grows (the apostle says) bondage. But if Christ has taken away our guilt; has borne our sins and made an atonement for iniquity; has procured for us pardon from God, and love, and blessing, and eternal life; and this by His own obedience unto death; then the words are fulfilled which say that Christ is the Destroyer of

Death by His death; by that death from which indeed He rose, but by that death wherein and whereby He bore and took away the sin of the world. C. J. V.—Death itself can do us no real prejudice; on the contrary, we have reason to welcome it as a friend, because, when it beats down these tenements of clay in which we are lodged, or rather imprisoned upon earth, it only opens a passage for us into a far more commodious and lasting habitation, where we shall possess the greatest riches, the highest honors, and the most transporting pleasures, without intermission and without end. R. Walker.

24. Job characterizes himself as a heap of ruins, and, appealing to the Almighty, argues that against such a thing one does not stretch out a hostile hand; neither does one derive advantage to himself from another’s calamity. This sense fits into v. 25 very well—Job, so far from increasing misfortune which he saw, commiserated and helped it. A. B. D.

27. These expressions, in their literal meaning, describe the violent inward heat caused by his inflammatory disease. They may likewise include the ferment of his mind ever since his afflictions came upon him. Scott.—My bowels are made to boil is an expression of violent mental agitation and suffering. A phrase of the same meaning occurs in Lam. 1:20 and 2:11, translated in the common version, my bowels are troubled (properly, are made to boil). Similar expressions occur in other ancient languages. The figure is a natural one, founded on the physical agitation and pain experienced in seasons of great mental anguish. (See Jer. 31:20.) Conant.

31. This is Job’s last sorrowful lament before the catastrophe. With what a delicate touch of the past is it that he makes this lament die away so melodiously. One hears the prolonged vibration of its elegiac strains. The festive, joyous music is hushed; the only tones are tones of sadness and lament—mesto, flebile, D.

This long and painful enumeration of Job’s miseries comes in the right place; after the declaration which shows the unshaken firmness of his convictions, and his deep sense of the absolute, though unsearchable wisdom of Him by whom he was afflicted; and before his last complete vindication of his integrity. The outer gloom goes on increasing to the very end of his trial; the exposure, shame, and ignominy, inward terrors, loathsome disease, unanswered prayer, certainty of near death, the nervous system wholly prostrate, all these in their combination give him not a momentary repose, and draw from his heart reluctant, but unrestrained complainings. Satan has had his will, he has reached within the skin; and though forbidden to take the life, he has done that which was sufficient to prove the result of a mortal trial, he has made Job feel that life was gone; but with all that he has not advanced one step toward real success; the deeper the sense of God’s alienation the more earnest are Job’s pleadings for a hearing; he holds fast his integrity, and far from renouncing God only seeks His presence. Cook.