PREVIOUS CHAPTER - NEXT CHAPTER - HELP - GR VIDEOS - GR YOUTUBE - TWITTER - SD1 YOUTUBE CHAPTER 30 Job 30:1-31.
1. younger--not the three friends
(Job 15:10; 32:4, 6, 7).
A general description:
Job 30:1-8,
the lowness of the persons who derided him;
Job 30:9-15,
the derision itself. Formerly old men rose to me
(Job 29:8).
Now not only my juniors, who are bound to reverence me
(Le 19:32),
but even the mean and base-born actually deride me;
opposed to, "smiled upon"
(Job 29:24).
This goes farther than even the "mockery" of Job by relations
and friends
(Job 12:4; 16:10, 20; 17:2, 6; 19:22).
Orientals feel keenly any indignity shown by the young. Job speaks as a
rich Arabian emir, proud of his descent.
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.
3. solitary--literally, "hard as a rock"; so translate,
rather, "dried up," emaciated with hunger. Job describes the rudest
race of Bedouins of the desert [UMBREIT].
4. mallows--rather, "salt-wort," which grows in deserts and is eaten
as a salad by the poor [MAURER].
5. they cried--that is, "a cry is raised." Expressing the contempt felt for this race by civilized and well-born Arabs. When these wild vagabonds make an incursion on villages, they are driven away, as thieves would be.
6. They are forced "to dwell."
7. brayed--like the wild ass
(Job 6:5
for food). The inarticulate tones of this uncivilized rabble are but
little above those of the beast of the field.
8. fools--that is, the impious and abandoned
(1Sa 25:25).
9. (Job 17:6). Strikingly similar to the derision Jesus Christ underwent (La 3:14; Ps 69:12). Here Job returns to the sentiment in Job 30:1. It is to such I am become a song of "derision." 10. in my face--rather, refrain not to spit in deliberate contempt before my face. To spit at all in presence of another is thought in the East insulting, much more so when done to mark "abhorrence." Compare the further insult to Jesus Christ (Isa 50:6; Mt 26:67).
11. He--that is, "God"; antithetical to "they"; English Version here follows the marginal reading (Keri).
12. youth--rather, a (low) brood. To rise on the right hand is to
accuse, as that was the position of the accuser in court
(Zec 3:1;
Ps 109:6).
13. Image of an assailed fortress continued. They tear up the path
by which succor might reach me.
14. waters--(So
2Sa 5:20).
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].
15. they--terrors.
16-23. Job's outward calamities affect his mind.
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).
18. of my disease--rather, "of God"
(Job 23:6).
19. God is poetically said to do that which the mourner had done to himself (Job 2:8). With lying in the ashes he had become, like them, in dirty color.
20. stand up--the reverential attitude of a suppliant before a
king
(1Ki 8:14;
Lu 18:11-13).
22. liftest . . . to wind--as a "leaf" or "stubble"
(Job 13:25).
The moving pillars of sand, raised by the wind to the clouds, as
described by travellers, would happily depict Job's agitated spirit, if
it be to them that he alludes.
23. This shows
Job 19:25
cannot be restricted to Job's hope of a temporal deliverance.
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. MAURER gives another translation which accords with the scope of Job 30:24-31; if it be natural for one in affliction to ask aid, why should it be considered (by the friends) wrong in my case? "Nevertheless does not a man in ruin stretch out his hand" (imploring help, Job 30:20; La 1:17)? If one be in his calamity (destruction) is there not therefore a "cry" (for aid)? Thus in the parallelism "cry" answers to "stretch--hand"; "in his calamity," to "in ruin." The negative of the first clause is to be supplied in the second, as in Job 30:25 (Job 28:17). 25. May I not be allowed to complain of my calamity, and beg relief, seeing that I myself sympathized with those "in trouble" (literally, "hard of day"; those who had a hard time of it).
26. I may be allowed to crave help, seeing that, "when I looked for
good (on account of my piety and charity), yet evil," &c.
27. bowels--regarded as the seat of deep feeling
(Isa 16:11).
28. mourning--rather, I move about blackened, though not by the
sun; that is, whereas many are blackened by the sun, I am, by the heat
of God's wrath (so "boiled,"
Job 30:27);
the elephantiasis covering me with blackness of skin
(Job 30:30),
as with the garb of mourning
(Jer 14:2).
This striking enigmatic form of Hebrew expression occurs,
Isa 29:9.
29. dragons . . . owls--rather, "jackals," "ostriches," both of which utter dismal screams (Mic 1:8); in which respect, as also in their living amidst solitudes (the emblem of desolation), Job is their brother and companion; that is, resembles them. "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].
30. upon me--rather, as in
Job 30:17
(see on
Job 30:17),
"my skin is black (and falls away) from me."
31. organ--rather, "pipe" (Job 21:12). "My joy is turned into the voice of weeping" (La 5:15). These instruments are properly appropriated to joy (Isa 30:29, 32), which makes their use now in sorrow the sadder by contrast. GOTO NEXT CHAPTER - D. J-F-B INDEX & SEARCH
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