Job 30 - ESV - Bible Reading / Study Notes

Job 30

30:1   “But now they laugh at me,
    men who are younger than I,
  whose fathers I would have disdained
    to set with the dogs of my flock.
2   What could I gain from the strength of their hands,
    men whose vigor is gone?
3   Through want and hard hunger
    they gnaw the dry ground by night in waste and desolation;
4   they pick saltwort and the leaves of bushes,
    and the roots of the broom tree for their food.¹
5   They are driven out from human company;
    they shout after them as after a thief.
6   In the gullies of the torrents they must dwell,
    in holes of the earth and of the rocks.
7   Among the bushes they bray;
    under the nettles they huddle together.
8   A senseless, a nameless brood,
    they have been whipped out of the land.
9   “And now I have become their song;
    I am a byword to them.
10   They abhor me; they keep aloof from me;
    they do not hesitate to spit at the sight of me.
11   Because God has loosed my cord and humbled me,
    they have cast off restraint² in my presence.
12   On my right hand the rabble rise;
    they push away my feet;
    they cast up against me their ways of destruction.
13   They break up my path;
    they promote my calamity;
    they need no one to help them.
14   As through a wide breach they come;
    amid the crash they roll on.
15   Terrors are turned upon me;
    my honor is pursued as by the wind,
    and my prosperity has passed away like a cloud.
16   “And now my soul is poured out within me;
    days of affliction have taken hold of me.
17   The night racks my bones,
    and the pain that gnaws me takes no rest.
18   With great force my garment is disfigured;
    it binds me about like the collar of my tunic.
19   God³ has cast me into the mire,
    and I have become like dust and ashes.
20   I cry to you for help and you do not answer me;
    I stand, and you only look at me.
21   You have turned cruel to me;
    with the might of your hand you persecute me.
22   You lift me up on the wind; you make me ride on it,
    and you toss me about in the roar of the storm.
23   For I know that you will bring me to death
    and to the house appointed for all living.
24   “Yet does not one in a heap of ruins stretch out his hand,
    and in his disaster cry for help?⁴
25   Did not I weep for him whose day was hard?
    Was not my soul grieved for the needy?
26   But when I hoped for good, evil came,
    and when I waited for light, darkness came.
27   My inward parts are in turmoil and never still;
    days of affliction come to meet me.
28   I go about darkened, but not by the sun;
    I stand up in the assembly and cry for help.
29   I am a brother of jackals
    and a companion of ostriches.
30   My skin turns black and falls from me,
    and my bones burn with heat.
31   My lyre is turned to mourning,
    and my pipe to the voice of those who weep.

Footnotes

[1] 30:4 Or warmth
[2] 30:11 Hebrew the bridle
[3] 30:19 Hebrew He
[4] 30:24 The meaning of the Hebrew is uncertain

Commentary

v1-15: Job now experiences mocking from the very men who gave him respect before. There were outcasts from society, who lived an unenviable life. Yet their sons (v9) fearlessly mocked Job.

v16-19: Job's life of fullness has now become a mere existence.

Whilst we may regret that we have not experienced the joys of 29.1-6, we may also be grateful that we do not lay in the same depths of despair. Our lives perhaps do not reach the extremes that Job experienced.

v20-23: Job's prayer to God in his despair. He still waits for God's explanation and answer.

Through this section, Job continues to see the hand of God upon him; He "afflicted me" (v11), "binds me" (v18).

v24-26: The unfairness of it all. The broken man crying for help expects some support, but Job is burdened even more. He had previously helped many who suffered, but now that same comfort eludes him.

v27-31: His experience of darkness; unceasing "churning", or sorrow of heart, he endures jackals and ostriches (owls), animals of the desert, his skin is blackened , his body in severe pain. HIS only response is one of mourning.