Job 3:14

which built desolate places The expression seems to be that which occurs several times in Scripture, e.g. Isaiah 58:12; Isaiah 61:4; Ezekiel 36:10; Ezekiel 36:33; Malachi 1:4, and means to build up or rebuild ruins, i. e. cities or habitations desolated or abandoned, and make them again inhabited. If this be the meaning the phrase must be used in a general way to indicate the greatness of those kings and counsellors when they were alive and the renown they won. To this idea the words in Job 3:15, princes who had gold, form a parallel. The speaker wishes to indicate that instead of lying in squalor and being the contempt of the low-born race of men as he now is (ch. 30), if he had died he would have been in company of the great dead who played famous parts in life. This appears to be the general idea of the words, but the phrase "built desolate places for themselves" is too vague in such a connexion, and the words "for themselves" suggest something definite and well-known as that which they built, as does the parallel expression "who filled their houses with silver." The Hebrew word "desolate places" has a distant resemblance in sound to the Egyptian word Pyramids, and some adopt this sense here. There may be some corruption of the Text.