Job 30
What Happens in This Chapter
Job continues his speech, turning from the honor he once had to the contempt he lives with now. Young men whose outcast fathers he would not have trusted with his sheep dogs now mock him, spit at him, and press in on him like an army breaking through a wall. He then speaks to God directly: he cries out and gets no answer, his body burns and aches, and he expects to be brought down to death. He recalls that he himself wept for people in trouble, and he ends with his music turned to mourning.
But now men younger than I am laugh at me. I would not even have trusted their fathers with the dogs that guarded my sheep.
1But now they that are younger than I have me in derision, whose fathers I would have disdained to have set with the dogs of my flock.
Job is contrasting his present state with the honor he described in the previous chapter. Dogs were not pets in this world but half-wild scavengers; the men who watched the flock dogs held the lowest job on the estate. Saying he would not have trusted these men's fathers even with that job places them at the bottom of the social order.
2What good to me was the strength of their hands? Their vigor was already gone.
2Yea, whereto might the strength of their hands profit me, in whom old age was perished?
3Worn thin by poverty and hunger, they kept to themselves, running off into a dry land that had long been empty and ruined.
3For want and famine they were solitary; fleeing into the wilderness in former time desolate and waste.
4They pulled up salty plants among the bushes, and the roots of the broom bush were their food.
4Who cut up mallows by the bushes, and juniper roots for their meat.
Mallow is a salty-tasting plant that grows in scrub land; the broom bush is a desert shrub whose roots are bitter and barely edible. Both are famine food, what people eat only when there is nothing else.
5They were driven out from among people, who shouted at them as if they were thieves.
5They were driven forth from among men, (they cried after them as after a thief;)
6So they had to live on the slopes of dry valleys, in holes in the ground, and among the rocks.
6To dwell in the cliffs of the valleys, in caves of the earth, and in the rocks.
The dry valleys are wadis: channels that carry water only after rain and stay empty the rest of the year. Their steep sides and caves were shelter for people with nowhere else to go.
7Among the bushes they cried out like animals, and under the stinging weeds they huddled together.
7Among the bushes they brayed; under the nettles they were gathered together.
8They were the children of foolish men, the children of men with no name at all. They were whipped and driven out of the land.
8They were children of fools, yea, children of base men: they were viler than the earth.
"Children of men with no name" means men with no family standing, no recognized ancestry, no land, no place in the community. In a society where identity came from your line and your holding, this was a description of total worthlessness.
9And now they make up songs about me. My name is the insult they throw at each other.
9And now am I their song, yea, I am their byword.
10They cannot stand me. They keep their distance, and they do not hold back from spitting in my face.
10They abhor me, they flee far from me, and spare not to spit in my face.
Spitting in someone's face was a deliberate public gesture of contempt and rejection, not just rudeness. That the lowest men in the region do it to Job measures how far he has fallen.
11Because God has taken the string off my bow and brought me low, they have thrown off all restraint in front of me.
11Because he hath loosed my cord, and afflicted me, they have also let loose the bridle before me.
Unstringing a bow leaves it useless, the standard image for a man stripped of his strength. The second half uses the opposite image: a bridle thrown off, so nothing now holds these men back in front of him.
12On my right side a mob of young men rises up. They shove my feet out from under me and build up ramps of attack against me.
12Upon my right hand rise the youth; they push away my feet, and they raise up against me the ways of their destruction.
The right side was where a supporter or a witness stood beside a man. Instead of helpers, attackers rise there. From here Job describes himself as a besieged city: attackers pile earthen ramps against the wall to get over it.
13They tear up the path I walk on. They make my ruin worse, and there is no one to hold them back.
13They mar my path, they set forward my calamity, they have no helper.
The Hebrew of the last phrase is ambiguous. It can mean that no one comes to help Job, or that no one restrains his attackers. The rendering takes the second sense; the first is equally possible.
14They come at me like water pouring through a wide break in a wall. Through the wreckage they keep rolling in on me.
14They came upon me as a wide breaking in of waters: in the desolation they rolled themselves upon me.
The siege picture continues: a wide breach is the gap where a city wall has finally been broken open, and the attackers pour through the rubble.
15Terrors have turned on me. My dignity is chased away like something blown off by the wind, and my good life has passed by like a cloud.
15Terrors are turned upon me: they pursue my soul as the wind: and my welfare passeth away as a cloud.
16And now my life pours out of me. Days of suffering have taken hold of me.
16And now my soul is poured out upon me; the days of affliction have taken hold upon me.
17At night my bones feel as if they are being pierced, and the pain that gnaws at me never rests.
17My bones are pierced in me in the night season: and my sinews take no rest.
18With great force my clothing is twisted out of shape around me. It grips me tightly, like the collar of my coat.
18By the great force of my disease is my garment changed: it bindeth me about as the collar of my coat.
Who is doing the gripping is unclear in the Hebrew. It can be read as the disease distorting Job's clothing on his swollen body, or as God seizing him by the garment and holding him by the collar. Translations divide between the two.
19He has thrown me into the mud, and I have become like dust and ashes.
19He hath cast me into the mire, and I am become like dust and ashes.
Dust and ashes stand both for what a human being is physically made of and for a mourner, who sat in ashes and threw dust on his head. Job has been reduced to both at once.
20I cry to you for help, and you do not answer me. I stand up, and you only gaze at me.
20I cry unto thee, and thou dost not hear me: I stand up, and thou regardest me not.
21You have turned cruel toward me. With your strong hand you fight against me.
21Thou art become cruel to me: with thy strong hand thou opposest thyself against me.
22You lift me up into the wind and make me ride on it. Then you toss me about until nothing of me holds together.
22Thou liftest me up to the wind; thou causest me to ride upon it, and dissolvest my substance.
23I know that you will bring me down to death, to the house that is set aside for everyone who lives.
23For I know that thou wilt bring me to death, and to the house appointed for all living.
The "house set aside for everyone who lives" is the grave, or the world of the dead, pictured as a meeting place appointed for all people, which everyone eventually reaches.
24Surely no one strikes at a man who is already in ruins, when he cries out for help in his trouble.
24Howbeit he will not stretch out his hand to the grave, though they cry in his destruction.
This verse is one of the most obscure in the book; the Hebrew is damaged or compressed, and translations differ sharply. It is read either as Job protesting that even a decent person does not kick a man who is already destroyed, or as a complaint that God does not hold back his hand from a ruined man who cries out.
25Did I not weep for the man who was in trouble? Was I not grieved deep inside for people who were poor?
25Did not I weep for him that was in trouble? was not my soul grieved for the poor?
26But when I hoped for good, evil came to me. When I waited for light, darkness came instead.
26When I looked for good, then evil came unto me: and when I waited for light, there came darkness.
27Inside me I am churning and cannot rest. Days of suffering have come to meet me.
27My bowels boiled, and rested not: the days of affliction prevented me.
In Hebrew, the inner organs, the belly and bowels, were where strong emotion was felt, much as English speakers say "heart." The image is of the insides boiling.
28I go about in mourning, my skin dark, but not from the sun. I stand up in the gathering of people and cry out for help.
28I went mourning without the sun: I stood up, and I cried in the congregation.
Darkened skin here belongs to mourning: mourners went unwashed, in coarse dark cloth, with dust on them. The "gathering" is the public assembly at the town gate, where business and legal cases were settled, the place where Job was once treated with honor, and where he now stands and cries out.
29I have become a brother to jackals and a companion to ostriches.
29I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls.
Jackals and ostriches were known for their eerie, wailing night cries and for living in abandoned ruins. To call yourself their brother is to say you have become a howling creature of the wasteland, outside human company.
30My skin has turned black and is peeling off me, and my bones burn with fever.
30My skin is black upon me, and my bones are burned with heat.
31My harp is now tuned for mourning, and my flute plays the sound of people weeping.
31My harp also is turned to mourning, and my organ into the voice of them that weep.
The harp (a lyre) and the flute (a reed pipe) were instruments of feasting and celebration. Job's are now playing only funeral laments.
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