Job 30: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

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.

Claim by Claim

1. 30:1
   • Now men younger than Job mock him.
   • Job would have disdained to put their fathers with the dogs of his flock.
2. 30:2
   • Job asks what profit the strength of their hands could be to him.
   • Their full vigor had perished.
3. 30:3
   • They were gaunt from want and hunger.
   • They fled to the parched, dry ground.
   • The land they fled to was desolate and waste.
4. 30:4
   • They plucked saltwort (mallow) among the shrubs.
   • The roots of the broom shrub were their food.
5. 30:5
   • They were driven out from among men.
   • People shouted at them as at a thief.
6. 30:6
   • They dwelt in the gullies of the wadis.
   • They dwelt in holes of the earth and among rocks.
7. 30:7
   • Among the shrubs they brayed like donkeys.
   • Under the nettles they huddled together.
8. 30:8
   • They were sons of senseless men.
   • They were sons of men without a name.
   • They were whipped and driven out of the land.
9. 30:9
   • Job has now become their mocking song.
   • Job has become a byword to them.
10. 30:10
    • They abhor Job.
    • They keep far away from him.
    • They do not withhold spitting in his face.
11. 30:11
    • He has loosed the cord and afflicted Job.
    • It is unclear whether the loosed cord is Job's own or belongs to the one who loosed it.
    • They have cast off restraint in Job's presence.
12. 30:12
    • At Job's right hand a brood of youths rises up.
    • They drive away his feet.
    • They cast up against him their paths of destruction.
13. 30:13
    • They tear up Job's path.
    • They further his ruin.
    • It is unclear whether the line says no one helps them or no one restrains them.
14. 30:14
    • They come on him as through a wide breach.
    • Amid the crash of ruin they roll themselves upon him.
15. 30:15
    • Terrors are turned upon Job.
    • His dignity is pursued away as by the wind.
    • His deliverance has passed away like a cloud.
16. 30:16
    • Job's soul is poured out within him.
    • Days of affliction have seized him.
17. 30:17
    • At night Job's bones are pierced through.
    • His gnawing pains take no rest.
18. 30:18
    • By great force Job's garment is disfigured.
    • It binds him tight like the collar of his tunic.
    • The King James attributes the great force to Job's disease.
19. 30:19
    • He has cast Job into the mire.
    • Job has become like dust and ashes.
20. 30:20
    • Job cries to God and God does not answer him.
    • Job stands, and God only gazes at him.
21. 30:21
    • God has turned cruel toward Job.
    • With the might of his hand God opposes Job.
22. 30:22
    • God lifts Job up to the wind.
    • God makes him ride upon it.
    • God dissolves him in the storm.
23. 30:23
    • Job knows God will bring him to death.
    • Job knows he will be brought to the house appointed for all the living.
24. 30:24
    • A hand is not stretched out against a ruined heap.
    • In his disaster there is a cry for help.
    • The King James reads that he will not stretch out his hand to the grave though they cry in his destruction.
25. 30:25
    • Job wept for the man whose day was hard.
    • Job's soul grieved for the needy.
26. 30:26
    • Job hoped for good and evil came.
    • Job waited for light and darkness came.
27. 30:27
    • Job's inward parts boil and do not rest.
    • Days of affliction have confronted him.
28. 30:28
    • Job goes about blackened, but not by the sun.
    • Job stands up in the assembly and cries for help.
29. 30:29
    • Job has become a brother to jackals.
    • Job has become a companion to ostriches.
30. 30:30
    • Job's skin has turned black and falls from him.
    • His bones burn with heat.
31. 30:31
    • Job's harp has turned to mourning.
    • His pipe has turned to the sound of weeping.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

30:1

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.

30:2

The KJV phrase "in whom old age was perished" is obscure. The Hebrew means their strength had already wasted away, so they were useless even as hired labor. Hunger had worn them out before their time.

30:4

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.

30:5

In a village, a shout of "thief" brought everyone out to chase the person off. Job is not describing travelers passing through but people formally expelled from settled society.

30:6

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.

30:7

"Brayed" is the noise a donkey makes. Job is describing them as making animal sounds rather than human speech. Nettles are stinging weeds, so even the shelter they crowd under hurts.

30:8

"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.

30:9

A byword is a name people throw around as an insult or a punchline, so that saying it is enough to make the point. Job has become the local example of a ruined man.

30:10

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.

30:11

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.

30:12

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.

30:13

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.

30:14

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.

30:15

"Welfare" in 1611 English meant wellbeing and prosperity in general, everything that made a life go well. It has nothing to do with government payments.

30:16

"My soul is poured out" uses the Hebrew word for life or self, and the image is liquid draining out of a jar until nothing is left in it.

30:17

"Sinews" are tendons, the cords that connect muscle to bone. Job locates the pain deep inside the body rather than on the skin, and says it is worst at night.

30:18

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.

30:19

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.

30:20

Job stops talking about those men here. Now he speaks straight to God.

30:23

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.

30:24

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.

30:27

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.

30:28

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.

30:29

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.

30:30

Job is describing his sickness. Black, peeling skin and burning bones are the way he tells us how the disease feels and looks.

30:31

The harp (a lyre) and the flute (a reed pipe) were instruments of feasting and celebration. Job's are now playing only funeral laments.