Job30chapter 30

Job 30:1-3

But now they that are younger than I have me in derision opens the reversal panel with the social order upended, men Job says he would have disdained to set with the dogs of his flock now mocking him openly. Henry reads the shift from chapter 29's princes falling silent to this chapter's youths jeering as the same honor described from its opposite end, so that the two chapters form one continuous fall. Whereto might the strength of their hands profit me identifies these mockers as sons of men already broken by want and famine, driven to the wilderness in desolation.

Job 30:4-6

Who cut up mallows by the bushes, and juniper roots for their meat catalogues the diet of the truly destitute, mallows a bitter salt-plant and juniper roots a food of last resort, as Gill and Clarke both read from the region's own flora. Driven forth from among men, they cried after them as after a thief marks these fathers as treated like criminals rather than merely poor. Their dwelling in the clifts of the valleys, in caves of the earth completes a picture of men living wholly outside ordered society, the raw material from which their scornful sons now come.

Job 30:7-9

Among the bushes they brayed, under the nettles they were gathered together likens this outcast company to braying animals, Barnes reading the verb as deliberately degrading, the opposite of the reasoned counsel Job's own words commanded in chapter 29. Children of fools, yea, children of base men names them not merely poor but without lineage, viler than the earth itself in the culture's own reckoning. And now am I their song, yea, I am their byword marks the reversal complete, the man whose speech once silenced princes now supplying material for the mockery of society's lowest rank.

Job 30:10-11

They abhor me, they flee far from me, and spare not to spit in my face describes contempt expressed physically, spitting the ancient world's most deliberate insult, as Gill notes from its use at Num 12:14 and Deut 25:9. Because he hath loosed my cord, and afflicted me, they have also let loose the bridle before me reads God's own loosening of Job's strength as the very permission these mockers take for their loosened restraint, the mechanism named plainly rather than left implied.

Job 30:12-14

Upon my right hand rise the youth, they push away my feet, and raise up against me the ways of their destruction turns the mockery of the verses before into active assault, the right hand being the position of an accuser in ancient legal custom, as Delitzsch notes from Ps 109:6. They mar my path, they set forward my calamity, they have no helper describes men without pity, acting as if against a condemned man none may defend. They came upon me as a wide breaking in of waters draws the siege imagery of chapter 19 forward into a flood, the desolation rolling over him with nothing left to stop it.

Job 30:15-16

Terrors are turned upon me: they pursue my soul as the wind names Job's fear itself as an active hunter, and my welfare passeth away as a cloud completes the image of something once solid now vanishing without a trace. And now my soul is poured out upon me, the days of affliction have taken hold describes grief as a liquid no vessel can hold, Gill reading the verb as the language of lament poured out elsewhere in the Psalms, the object of the emptying now Job's own soul rather than only what men do to him.

Job 30:17-18

My bones are pierced in me in the night season, and my sinews take no rest returns the physical ruin to the center of the speech, the disease working hardest when no daylight distraction masks it. By the great force of my disease is my garment changed: it bindeth me about as the collar of my coat pictures the disfigured skin gathering the clothing tight against the body, as Delitzsch reads the figure. Clarke notes the disease first named at 2:7, sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown, is still the subject many chapters later, unrelieved rather than merely remembered.

Job 30:19

like dust and ashes: He hath cast me into the mire, and I am become like dust and ashes completes a chain the floor confirms runs through three places only: Abraham used the same phrase of himself before the Lord at Gen 18:27, Job uses it here of his present ruin, and Job uses it again at 42:6 of his repentance. Henry reads the phrase's return at the book's close as deliberate, the humility Job claims here under affliction becoming, by the end, humility freely offered in worship. Delitzsch notes the image is Job's own, the mire and ashes of a town's refuse heap where he now sits, rather than a figure borrowed from any of the friends.

Job 30:20-23

I cry unto thee, and thou dost not hear me: I stand up, and thou regardest me not opens the darkest address in Job's speeches, a direct charge of divine silence stated as his own experience and left standing here by the text without correction. Thou art become cruel to me: with thy strong hand thou opposest thyself against me goes further still, and Barnes notes the book records this as Job's honest perception rather than doctrine the reader is meant to adopt, since Job has not yet heard the whirlwind. Thou liftest me up to the wind, thou causest me to ride upon it, and dissolvest my substance pictures a storm-driven dissolution, and Job names his own certain end, that God will bring him to death, and to the house appointed for all living.

Job 30:24-25

Howbeit he will not stretch out his hand to the grave, though they cry in his destruction is read two ways by the older commentators, either that no man in the grave can any longer reach for help, or that God restrains even his final stroke from a man already ruined; Gill sets out both without deciding between them. Did not I weep for him that was in trouble? was not my soul grieved for the poor? turns at once from Job's darkest complaint to the record of his compassion for others, the rescue-ethic of chapter 29 asserted again even from the ash heap, a contrast Henry notes the friends never once make in his favor.

Job 30:26-28

When I looked for good, then evil came unto me: and when I waited for light, there came darkness restates the reversal that opened the chapter, now as Job's settled expectation rather than a single event. My bowels boiled, and rested not: the days of affliction prevented me returns to physical torment, boiled read by Delitzsch as the visceral heat of continual fever rather than a figure of speech alone. I went mourning without the sun: I stood up, and I cried in the congregation pictures public grief performed in the open assembly, a reversal of the gate scene of 29:7 where Job once sat as judge and now cries out instead.

Job 30:29-31

I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls names creatures of the waste and the night as Job's nearest kin, dragons here the jackals of the wilderness rather than any mythical beast, as Gill and Delitzsch both read the Hebrew tannim. My skin is black upon me, and my bones are burned with heat describes the disease's visible ravage, Clarke reading black as skin peeling and darkening under the disease's advance rather than a figure of mourning alone. My harp also is turned to mourning, and my organ into the voice of them that weep closes the panel with Job's own instruments of joy repurposed for grief, the same reversal the whole chapter has traced from honor to lament.