Jobchapter 30
31 verses · KJVJob book hub →
Key verse
For I know that thou wilt bring me to death, and to the house appointed for all living.
It stands in scene B of the chapter, verses 16 to 31.
The chapter
Chapter summary
'But now they that are younger than I have me in derision' (30:1): sons of men whose fathers he would have disdained to set with the dogs of his flock. Now he is their song and their byword; they spit in his face. He turns to God: thou art turned to be cruel to me; 'I cry unto thee, and thou dost not answer me' (30:20). I know thou wilt bring me to death, to the house appointed for all living. His skin is black and falls from him, his bones burned with heat. 'My harp is turned to mourning, and my pipe into the voice of them that weep.'
Context
Poetry · Unknown · Job overview
Where the chapter sits
Job 30 falls in Job's closing defense (chapters 29–31). Job's last word: a declaration of innocence before Elihu's interruption and before the whirlwind.
Before it: Hymn to wisdom, chapters 28. After it: Elihu: a younger voice, chapters 32–37.
The whole shape of Job→The world behind this chapter
Job 30The history
The reversal is exact: 'but now they that are younger than I have me in derision, whose fathers I would have disdained to set with the dogs of my flock.' Sheepdogs were working animals, not pets, and they ranked at the bottom of the household; saying a man's father was not fit to keep company with them is as low as the insult goes.
The rest of the history, and what it meant to them
Then Job describes who these people are, and the description is a piece of social history. They are men driven out from among ordinary society, hungry and gaunt, fleeing into the wilderness and the wasteland. They gather saltwort by the bushes and juniper roots for food, real famine foods, the bitter marsh plants and woody roots people ate when nothing else was left. They live in the clefts of the valleys, in caves of the earth and among the rocks, and they bray in the bushes like animals. Bands of outcasts really did live in the badlands beyond the settled country, and every ancient community had them.
Job's point is that even these have him for a byword and spit in his face, because his cord, the tent-rope image for a man's strength and standing, has been loosed. They push away his feet and cast up their ways of destruction against him, the language of a siege ramp raised against a wall.
The last section is his body and his God. His bowels boil and do not rest; his skin is black and falls off him; his bones burn with heat. He is a brother to jackals and a companion to ostriches, the two creatures whose night cries the desert was known for, a wailing sound anyone who had camped out there had heard. His harp is turned to mourning and his pipe to the voice of them that weep. And he says the thing under all of it: I cry unto thee, and thou dost not hear me.
What it meant to them
Chapters 29 and 30 are meant to be read as one fall. The man the nobles stood up for is now mocked by people who eat roots in caves, and the God he served will not answer the phone.
For hearers the honesty was the gift. The Bible lets a righteous man say out loud that God is not answering, and does not edit the sentence out.
Sources cited
- John E. Hartley, The Book of Job
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews & Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
A. Job: Now They That Are Younger Hold Me in Derision
1. (vv. 1-3)
a.have me in derision: 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 30:1, 3 voicesWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
Job 30:1
“But now they that are younger than I - Margin, “of fewer days.” It is not probable that Job here refers to his three friends. It is not possible to determine their age with accuracy, but in Job 15:10, they claim that there were with them old and very aged men, much older than the father of Job. Though that place may possibly refer not to themselves but to those who held the same opinions with them, yet none of those who engaged in the discussion, except Ehhu Job 32:6, are represented as young men.”
Job 30:1
They are not allowed to enter a house, but run about wild in the open air, living on offal and chance morsels (Ps 59:14, 15). Here again we are reminded of Jesus Christ (Ps 22:16). "Their fathers, my coevals, were so mean and famished that I would not have associated them with (not to say, set them over) my dogs in guarding my flock."
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Job 30:1
“Job here speaks of what he might have done, not of what he did: he was not of such a spirit as to set any of the children of men with the dogs of his flock; he knew the dignity of human nature better than to do so.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Job 30:2, 3 voices
Job 30:2
“The strength of their hands profit me - He is speaking here of the fathers of these young men. What was the strength of their hands to me? Their old age also has perished. The sense of which I believe to be this: I have never esteemed their strength even in their most vigorous youth, nor their conduct, nor their counsel even in old age. They were never good for any thing, either young or old. As their youth was without profit, so their old age was without honor. See Calmet.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 30:2
“If their fathers could be of no profit to me, much less the sons, who are feebler than their sires; and in whose case the hope of attaining old age is utterly gone, so puny are they (Job 5:26) [MAURER]. Even if they had "strength of hands," that could be now of no use to me, as all I want in my present affliction is sympathy.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Job 30:2
“The young were not fit for labour, they were so lazy, and went about their work so awkwardly: Whereto might the strength of their hands profit me? The old were not to be advised with in the smallest matters, for in them was old age indeed, but their old age was perished, they were twice children.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Job 30:3, 1 voice
Job 30:3
“They were ready to starve, for they would not dig, and to beg they were ashamed. Had they been brought to necessity by the providence of God, their neighbours would have sought them out as proper objects of charity and would have relieved them; but, being brought into straits by their own slothfulness and wastefulness, nobody was forward to relieve them.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2. (vv. 4-6)
a.cut up mallows: 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 30:4, 1 voice
Job 30:4
“Who cut up mallows by the bushes - מלוח malluach, which we translate mallows, comes from מלח melach, salt; some herb or shrub of a salt nature, sea-purslane, or the salsaria, salsola, or saltwort. Bochart says it is the ἁλιμος of the Greeks, and the halimus of the Romans. Some translate it nettles. The Syriac and Arabic omit the whole verse. The halimus, or atriplex halimus, grows near the sea in different countries, and is found in Spain, America, England, and Barbary.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 30:5, 1 voice
Job 30:5
“They were driven forth from among men - As vagabonds and outcasts. They were regarded as unfit to live among the civilized and the orderly, and were expelled as nuisances. (They cried after them as after a thief.) - The inhabitants of the place where they lived drove them out with a loud outcry, as if they were thieves and robbers.”
Job 30:6, 2 voices
Job 30:6
“To dwell in the cliffs of the valleys,.... Or "brooks" (l), in such hollow places as were made by floods and streams of waters: in caves of the earth, and in the rocks; where they betook themselves for fear of men, and through shame, being naked and miserable not fit to be seen: Job has respect to the Horites and Troglodytes, his neighbours, who dwelt in such places chiefly. (l) נחלים "torrentium", Tigurine version, Pagninus, Montanus, &c.”
Job 30:6
“They are forced "to dwell." cliffs of the valleys--rather, "in the gloomy valleys"; literally, "in the gloom of the valleys," or wadies. To dwell in valleys is, in the East, a mark of wretchedness.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
3. (vv. 7-9)
a.they brayed: 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 30:7, 1 voice
Job 30:7
“Among the bushes - Coverdale, “Upon the dry heath went they about crying.” The Hebrew word is the same which occurs in Job 30:4, and means bushes in general. They were heard in the shrubbery that grew in the desert. They brayed - ינהקו yinâhaqû. The Vulgate renders this, “They were concealed.” The Septuagint, “Amidst sweet sounds they cry out.” Noyes, “They utter their cries.” The Hebrew word properly means to “bray.” It occurs only here and in Job 6:5, where it is applied to the ass.”
Job 30:8, 2 voices
Job 30:8
“Children of fools - Children of nabal; children without a name; persons of no consideration, and descendants of such. Viler than the earth - Rather, driven out of the land; persons not fit for civil society.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 30:8
“The Horites in Mount Seir (Ge 14:6 with which compare Ge 36:20, 21; De 2:12, 22) were probably the aborigines, driven out by the tribe to which Job's ancestors belonged; their name means troglodytæ, or "dwellers in caves." To these Job alludes here (Job 30:1-8, and Ge 24:4-8, which compare together).”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Job 30:9, 1 voice
Job 30:9
“And now am I their song - See Job 17:6; compare Psa 69:12, “I was the song of the drunkards;” Lam 3:14, “I was a derision to all my people, and their song all the day.” The sense is, that they made Job and his calamities the subject of low jesting, and treated him with contempt. His name and sufferings would be introduced into their scurrilous songs to give them pith and point, and to show how much they despised him now. Yea, I am their by-word - See the notes at Job 17:6.”
4. (vv. 10-11)
a.abhor me, they flee far: 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 30:10, 1 voice
Job 30:10
“They abhor me - Hebrew, They regard me as abominable. They flee far from me - Even such an impious and low born race now will have nothing to do with me. They would consider it no honor to be associated with me, but keep as far from me as possible. And spare not to spit in my face - Margin, “withhold not spittle from.” Noyes renders this “Before my face;” and so Luther Wemyss, Umbreit, and Prof. Lee. The Hebrew may mean either to spit in the face, or to spit “in the presence” of anyone. It is quite immaterial which interpretation is adopted, since in the view of Orientals the one was considered about the same as the other. In their notions of courtesy and urbanity, he commits an insult of the same kind who spits in the presence of another which he would if he spit on him. Are they not right? Should it not be so considered every where? Yet how different their views from the more refined notions of the civilized Occidentals! In America, more than in any other land, are offences of this kind frequent and gross. Of nothing do foreigners complain of us more, or with more justice; and much as we boast of our intelligence and refinement, we should gain much if in this respect we would sit down at the feet of a Bedouin Arab, and incorporate his views into our maxims of politeness.”
Job 30:11, 2 voices
Job 30:11
“Because he hath loosed my cord - According to this translation, the reference here is to God, and the sense is, that the reason why he was thus derided and contemned by such a worthless race was, that God had unloosened his cord. That is, God had rendered him incapable of vindicating himself, or of inflicting punishment. The figure, according to this interpretation, is taken from a bow, and Job means to say that his bow was relaxed, his vigor was gone, and they now felt that they might insult him with impunity.”
Job 30:11
“He--that is, "God"; antithetical to "they"; English Version here follows the marginal reading (Keri). my cord--image from a bow unstrung; opposed to Job 29:20. The text (Chetib), "His cord" or "reins" is better; "yea, each lets loose his reins" [UMBREIT].”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
5. (vv. 12-14)
a.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 30:12, 1 voice
Job 30:12
“Upon my right hand rise the youth - The word פרחח pirchach, which we translate youth, signifies properly buds, or the buttons of trees. Mr. Good has younglings. Younkers would be better, were it not too colloquial. They push away my feet - They trip up my heels, or they in effect trample me under their feet. They rush upon and overwhelm me. They are violently incensed against me.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 30:13, 1 voice
Job 30:13
“They mar my path - They break up all my plans. Perhaps here, also, the image is taken from war, and Job may represent himself as on a line of march, and he says that this rabble comes and breaks up his path altogether. They break down the bridges, and tear up the way, so that it is impossible to pass along. His plans of life were embarrassed by them, and they were to him a perpetual annoyance.”
Job 30:14, 2 voices
Job 30:14
“They came upon me as a wide breaking in - They storm me on every side. In the desolation they rolled themselves - When they had made the breach, they rolled in upon me as an irresistible torrent. There still appears to be an allusion to a besieged city: the sap, the breach, the storm, the flight, the pursuit, and the slaughter. See the following verse, Job 30:15 (note).”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 30:14
“But it is better to retain the image of Job 30:12, 13. "They came [upon me] as through a wide breach," namely, made by the besiegers in the wall of a fortress (Isa 30:13) [MAURER]. in the desolation--"Amidst the crash" of falling masonry, or "with a shout like the crash" of, &c.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
6. (v. 15)
Job 30:15-16
a.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 30:15, 2 voices
Job 30:15
“Terrors are turned upon me - As if they were all turned upon him, or made to converge toward him. Everything suited to produce terror seemed to have a direction given it toward him. Umbreit, and some others, however, suppose that God is here referred to, and that the meaning is,” God is turned against me terrors drive as a storm against me.” The Hebrew will bear either construction; but it is more emphatic and impressive to suppose it means that everything adapted to produce terror seemed to be turned against him.”
Job 30:15
“And still, which way soever he looked, they turned upon him; which way soever he fled, they pursued him. My soul (Heb., my principal one, my princess ); the soul is the principal part of the man; it is our glory; it is every way more excellent than the body, and therefore that which pursues the soul, and threatens that, should be most dreaded.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
B. Job: My Harp Is Turned to Mourning
1. (v. 16)
Job 30:16, 1 voice
Job 30:16
“And now my soul is poured out upon me - So in Psa 42:4, “I pour out my soul in me.” We say that one is dissolved in grief. The language is derived from the fact that the soul in grief seems to lose all firmness or consistence. The Arabs style a fearful person, one who has a watery heart, or whose heart melts away like water. Noyes.”
2. (vv. 17-18)
a.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 30:17, 3 voices
Job 30:17
“In the night season my bone is pierced with pangs, and they that eat me sleep not. If we mark the history by itself, the case appears plain, because the body of the holy man, through the hollows of ulcers, a swarming multitude of worms was wounding. But if we dive into the mystery of the allegory, what are denoted by 'the bones,' but the strong ones severally in the body of Holy Church? Who, as it were, by their solidity hold together the members, while they bear with stedfastness the practices of those going weakly.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XXpatristic
Job 30:17
“My bones are pierced in me - The bones are often represented in the Scriptures as the seat of acute pain; Psa 6:2; Psa 22:14; Psa 31:10; Psa 38:3; Psa 42:10; Pro 14:30; compare Job 20:11. The meaning here is, that he had had shooting or piercing pains in the night, which disturbed and prevented his rest. It is mentioned as a special aggravation of his sufferings that they were “in the night” - a time when we expect repose. And my sinews take no rest - See the word here rendered sinews explained in the note at ver.”
Job 30:17
“In the Hebrew, night is poetically personified, as in Job 3:3: "night pierceth my bones (so that they fall) from me" (not as English Version, "in me"; see Job 30:30). sinews--so the Arabic, "veins," akin to the Hebrew; rather, "gnawers" (see on Job 30:3), namely, my gnawing pains never cease.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Job 30:18, 2 voices
Job 30:18
“Is my garment changed - There seem to be here plain allusions to the effect of his cruel disease; the whole body being enveloped with a kind of elephantine hide, formed by innumerable incrustations from the ulcerated surface. It bindeth me about - There is now a new kind of covering to my body, formed by the effects of this disease; and it is not a garment which I can cast off; it is as closely attached to me as the collar of my coat.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 30:18
“It would be noisome to describe what a condition poor Job was in for want of clean linen and good attendance, and what filthy rags all his clothes were. Some think that, among other diseases, Job was ill of a quinsy or swelling in his throat, and that it was this which bound him about like a stiff collar.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
3. (v. 19)
a.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 30:19, 2 voices
Job 30:19
He hath cast me into the mire - That is, God has done it. In this book the name of God is often understood where the speaker seems to avoid it, in order that it may not be needlessly repeated. On the meaning of the expression here, see the notes at Job 9:31. And I am become like dust and ashes - Either in appearance, or I am regarded as being as worthless as the mire of the streets. Rosenmuller supposes it means, “I am more like a mass of inanimate matter than a living man.”
Job 30:19
“Instead of sweet smell, there shall be a stench, Isa. iii. We are but dust and ashes at the best, and our bodies are vile bodies; but we are apt to forget it, till God, by some sore disease, makes us sensibly to feel and own what we are. " I have become already like that dust and ashes into which I must shortly be resolved: wherever I go I carry my grave about with me." 4.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
4. (vv. 20-23)
a.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 30:20, 1 voice
Job 30:20
“I cry unto thee - I am persecuted by man, afflicted with sore disease, and apparently forsaken of God. I stand up - Or, as some translate, “I persevere, and thou lookest upon me.” Thou seest my desolate, afflicted state; but thine eye doth not affect thy heart. Thou leavest me unsupported to struggle with my adversities.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 30:21, 1 voice
Job 30:21
“Thou art become cruel to me - Margin, turned to be. This language, applied to God, seems to be harsh and irreverent, and it may well be inquired whether the word cruel does not express an idea which Job did not intend. The Hebrew word אכזר 'akzâr, is from an obsolete root כזר - not found in Hebrew. The Arabic root, nearly the same as this, means to break with violence; to rout as an enemy; then to be enraged.”
Job 30:22, 1 voice
Job 30:22
“Thou liftest me up to the wind - Thou hast so completely stripped me of all my substance, that I am like chaff lifted up by the wind; or as a straw, the sport of every breeze; and at last carried totally away, being dissipated into particles by the continued agitation.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 30:23, 4 voices
Job 30:23
“I know that Thou wilt deliver me to death, where is the house appointed for all living. In the preceding part of this work the point was treated of, that before the Coming of the Lord even the righteous did descend to the abodes of hell, though they were kept not in woes but in rest.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XXpatristic
Job 30:23
“For I know that thou wilt bring me to death - This is the language of despair. Occasionally Job seems to have had an assurance that his calamities would pass by, and that God would show himself to be his friend on earth (compare the notes at Job 19:25), and at other times he utters the language of despair. Such would be commonly the case with a good man afflicted as he was, and agitated with alternate hopes and fears. We are not to set these expressions down as contradictions.”
Job 30:23
“JOB suffered from a terrible sickness which filled him with pain both day and night. It is supposed that, in addition to his grievous eruptions upon the skin, he endured great difficulty in breathing. He says in the 18th verse, "By the great force of my disease is my garment changed: it binds me about as the collar of my coat." His clothes were soiled and clung to him. His skin was blackened and seemed to be tightened. He was like a man whose tunic strangles him—the collar of his garment seemed to be fast bound about his throat.”
Job 30:23
“The grave is a house, a narrow, dark, cold, ill-furnished house, but it will be our residence, where we shall rest and be safe. It is our long home, our own home; for it is our mother's lap, and in it we are gathered to our fathers.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
5. (vv. 24-25)
a.he will not stretch out his hand to the grave: 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 30:24, 4 voices
Job 30:24
“He will not stretch out his hand to the grave - After all that has been said relative to the just translation and true meaning of this verse, is it not evident that it is in the mouth of Job a consolatory reflection? As if he said, Though I suffer here, I shall not suffer hereafter. Though he add stroke to stroke, so as to destroy my life, yet his displeasure shall not proceed beyond the grave. Though they cry in his destruction - Mr. Good translates: Surely there, in its ruin, is freedom.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 30:24
“Expressing Job's faith as to the state after death. Though one must go to the grave, yet He will no more afflict in the ruin of the body (so Hebrew for "grave") there, if one has cried to Him when being destroyed. The "stretching of His hand" to punish after death answers antithetically to the raising "the cry" of prayer in the second clause.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Job 30:24
“To the grave - The hand of God's wrath will not follow me beyond death; I shall then be safe and easy: Tho' men cry in his destruction: tho' most men cry and are affrighted, while they are dying, while the body is sinking into destruction; yet I desire it, I have nothing to fear therein, since I know that my redeemer liveth.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Job 30:24
“Though men cry in his destruction (though, when they are dying, there is a great deal of agony and out-cry, many a sigh, and groan, and complaint), yet in the grave they feel nothing, they fear nothing, but all is quiet there.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Job 30:25, 3 voices
Job 30:25
“Did not I weep ... - Job here appeals to his former life, and says that it had been a characteristic of his life to manifest compassion to the afflicted and the poor. His object in doing this is, evidently, to show how remarkable it was that he was so much afflicted. “Did I deserve,” the sense is, “such a hard lot?”
Job 30:25
IN ENDEAVORING TO JUSTIFY the ways of God, Job's three friends came to the harsh conclusion that he would not have been so severely afflicted if he had not been a very great sinner. Among other accusations against the afflicted patriarch, Eliphaz the Temanite had the cruelty to lay this at his door, "Thou hast not given water to the weary to drink, and thou hast withholden bread from the hungry."
Job 30:25
“Did not I - Have I now judgment without mercy, because I afforded no mercy to others in misery? No; my conscience acquits me from this inhumanity: I did mourn over others in their miseries.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
6. (vv. 26-28)
a.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 30:26, 1 voice
Job 30:26
“When I looked for good - When I supposed that respect would be shown me; or when I looked forward to an honored old age. I expected to be made happy and prosperous through life, as the result of my uprightness and benevolence; but, instead of that, calamity came and swept all my comforts away. He experienced the instability which most people are called to experience, and the divine dealings with him showed that no reliance could be placed on confident plans of happiness in this life.”
Job 30:27, 1 voice
Job 30:27
“My bowels boiled - Or rather, My bowels boil - for he refers to his present circumstances, and not to the past. It is clear that by this phrase he designs to describe deep affliction. The bowels, in the Scriptures, are represented as the seat of the affections. By this is meant the upper bowels, or the region of the heart and the lungs. The reason is, that deep emotions of the mind are felt there.”
Job 30:28, 2 voices
Job 30:28
“I went mourning without the sun - חמה chammah, which we here translate the sun, comes from a root of the same letters, which signifies to hide, protect, etc., and may be translated, I went mourning without a protector or guardian; or, the word may be derived from חם cham, to be hot, and here it may signify fury, rage, anger; and thus it was understood by the Vulgate: Maerens incedebam, sine furore, I went mourning without anger; or, as Calmet translates, Je marchois tout triste, mais sans me laisser aller a l’emportement; “I walked in deep sadness, but did not give way to an angry spirit.” The Syriac and Arabic understood it in the same way.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 30:28
“He walked out of the sun (so some) in dark shady places, as melancholy people use to do. If he went into the congregation, to join with them in solemn worship, instead of standing up calmly to desire their prayers, he stood up and cried aloud, through pain of body, or anguish of mind, like one half distracted.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
7. (vv. 29-31)
a.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.
Job 30:29, 3 voices
Job 30:29
“I was a brother to dragons, and a companion to ostriches. The term 'dragons' is used to denote the cruel spirits who plot our destruction, or those persons who in the Holy Church imitate those spirits by living corruptly. The ostrich has wings and cannot fly, for it shows as it were the appearance of flight but never mounts upward into the air. Thus all hypocrites are like ostriches, who while they pretend holiness, never practice the reality of holiness.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XXpatristic
Job 30:29
“I am a brother to dragons - That is, my loud complaints and cries resemble the doleful screams of wild animals, or of the most frightful monsters. The word “brother” is often used in this sense, to denote similarity in any respect. The word “dragons” here (תנין tannı̂yn), denotes properly a sea-monster, a great fish, a crocodile; or the fancied animal with wings called a dragon; see the notes at Isa 13:”
Job 30:29
"Dragon," Hebrew, tannim, usually means the crocodile; so perhaps here, its open jaws lifted towards heaven, and its noise making it seem as if it mourned over its fate [BOCHART].
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Job 30:30, 3 voices
Job 30:30
“My skin is black upon me,.... Either through deep melancholy, as may be observed in persons of such a disposition, through grief and trouble; or rather through the force of his disease, the burning ulcers and black scabs with which he was covered, as the Jews were through famine, in their captivity, Lam 4:8; and my bones are burnt with heat; with the heat of a burning fever; which not only made his inwards boil, but reached to his bones, and dried up the marrow of them.”
Job 30:30
“My skin is black - By continual exposure to the open air, and parching influence of the sun. My bones are burned with heat - A strong expression, to point out the raging fever that was continually preying upon his vitals.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 30:30
“The blood settled, and the sores suppurated and by degrees scabbed over, which made his skin look black. Even his garment had its colour changed with the continual running of his boils, and the soft clothing he used to wear had now grown so stiff that all his garments were like his collar,”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Job 30:31, 1 voice
Job 30:31
“My harp also is turned to mourning - What formerly gave cheerful sounds, now gives only notes of plaintiveness and lamentation. The harp was probably an instrument originally designed to give sounds of joy. For a description of it, see the notes at Isa 5:12. And my organ - The form of what is here called the organ, is not certainly known. The word עגב ‛ûgâb is doubtless from עגב ‛âgab, “to breathe, to blow”; and most probably the instrument hero intended was the pipe. For a description of it, see the notes at Isa 5:”
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Job 30. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on 9 works. Open for the list.
This page draws on Adam Clarke; Albert Barnes; Charles Spurgeon; Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Book of Job; Gregory the Dialogist, Morals on the Book of Job, Book XX; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871); John Gill; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765) and Matthew Henry.
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