Job 30:1

JOB 30

JOB'S PRESENT DISTRESS -

THE SECOND MEMBER OF THE TRILOGY: JOB'S SUFFERINGS

In this chapter, Job's period of suffering and distress is vividly contrasted with the glory and honor of the days of his exaltation. "This chapter is perhaps the most pathetic of all Job's poems of grief and a fitting finish to all the earlier ones."[1]

"The repetition of `But now ... and now ... and now' in Job 30:1,9,16 effectively accents the themes in which Job contrasts the bleak, turbulent present with the peaceful past. The king of counselors has become the byword of fools (Job 30:1-15). The friendly favor of God has `turned into cruelty."[2]

This beautiful paragraph just quoted from Meredith G. Kline concludes with a sentence which we must reject, because God is not cruel, unmerciful, unfeeling or, in any manner whatever, disinterested in the trials and struggles of men. In the epilogue (Job 42) the Bible flatly declares that Job spoke the truth about God; and the interpreters, including many others besides Kline, are wrong in attributing sentiments and even sayings to Job that contradict the universal description of God, throughout every page of the Bible, as even Jonah stated it, "I knew that thou art a gracious God, merciful, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness, and repentest thee of the evil" (Jonah 4:2). We shall cite other scholarly opinions in this chapter which are erroneous in this vital particular.

THE KING OF COUNSELORS NOW THE BYWORD OF FOOLS

Job 30:1-9

"But now they that are younger than I have me in derision,

Whose fathers I disdained to set with the dogs of my flock.

Yea, the strength of their hands, whereto should it profit me?

Men in whom ripe age[3] is perished.

They are gaunt with want and famine;

They gnaw the dry ground, in the gloom of wasteness and desolation.

They pluck salt-wort by the bushes;

And the roots of the broom are their food.

They are driven forth from the midst of men;

They cry after them as after a thief;

So that they dwell in frightful valleys,

In holes of the earth and of the rocks.

Under the bushes they bray;

Under the nettles they are gathered together.

They are children of fools, yea, children of base men;

They were scourged out of the land.

And now I am become their song,

Yea, I am a byword unto them."

This section describes the rejected refuse of humanity, the malcontents, the idle, the indolent, the off-scouring of the social order, which some would call the scum of the earth, the point being that even the bottom of the totem pole in their culture considered Job as inferior to themselves; and they derided and mocked him in songs and verbal taunts.

Job has been criticized by some for his low-evaluation of these people; but, in fairness, it should be observed that the evaluation here was not Job's; it was the evaluation and judgment of the whole society in which he lived.

Watson summarized these verses as follows: "These people were gaunt with hunger and vice, herded in the wilderness where alone they were allowed to exist, eating salt-wort and broom-roots for food. The appearance of one of them prompted cries of `thieves and robbers.' They lived in caves, and among the rocks; like wild asses they brayed in the scrub and gathered among the nettles. Base men, children of fools, having dishonored humanity, they had been whipped out of the land. Even these abhorred Job, mocking him in song and byword, even spitting in his face."[4]

Blair pointed out that, "These people refused to work, and were too proud to beg."[5] This left them the option of stealing and/or scrounging for whatever they might find in the wilderness. In neither the Old Testament nor the New Testament, can there be found any acceptance of people who will not work. In the Decalogue, the word from heaven is, "Six days shalt thou labor." And in the New Testament, the Divine Commandment stands: "He that will not work, don't let him eat"! (2 Thessalonians 3:10).

"Under the bushes they bray" (Job 30:7). Rawlinson interpreted this to mean that, "The speech of those people sounded to Job more like the braying of asses than articulate speech."[6] For reasons which are by no means clear to this writer, Driver and Peake gave the meaning here as, "They bray like donkeys under the influence of lust, and copulate with no better bed than a patch of nettles."[7] Pope insisted that, "There is no sexual connotation here, as Peake suggested."[8] This writer is familiar with the behavior of donkeys; and their braying is closely related to hunger, not sex. Rowley was also aware of this connection between hunger and the braying of donkeys.[9]

"And now I am become their song; yea, I am a byword unto them" (Job 30:9). This verse belongs both to the preceding verses and to those afterward. "Job continues his lament over his changed condition; but, whereas in the preceding verses he has concentrated on the character of his tormentors, here he begins to dwell upon the effect of their torments upon him."[10]

The eloquent words of Kline catch the spirit of these verses perfectly: "Even the juveniles of this rabble (Job 30:1) regard Job as the fitting butt of their derisive ditties (Job 30:9). No show of contempt is too mean for them (Job 30:10), as with unbridled spite (Job 30:11b) they devise torments (Job 30:12ff) against this ruined bourgeois, now a helpless outcast upon their dunghill domain."[11]