Job 30:28-29 - Exposition

I went mourning without the sun ; rather, I go about blackened , but not by the sun. Grief and suffering, according to Oriental notions, blackened the face (see Lamentations 4:8 ; Lamentations 5:10 ; Psalms 119:83 ; and below, Psalms 119:30 ). I stood up, and I cried in the congregation ; rather, I stand up in the assembly ' and cry for help ( see the Revised Version). Job feels this as the most pitiable feature in his ease. He is broken down; he can no longer endure. At first he could sit in silence for seven days ( Job 2:13 ); now he is reduced to uttering complaints and lamentations. He is a brother , not to dragons, but to jackals. His laments are like the long melancholy cries that those animals emit during the silence of the night, so well known to Eastern travellers. He adds further that he is a companion, not to owls, but to ostriches ; which, like jackals, have a melancholy cry.