Job 30:13

_THEY MAR MY PATH, THEY SET FORWARD MY CALAMITY, THEY HAVE NO HELPER._ Image of an assailed fortress continued. They tear up the path by which succour might reach me. SET FORWARD - in calamity (Zechariah 1:15). THEY HAVE NO HELPER - Arabic proverb for contemptible persons. Yet even such afflict Job....

1-14 Job contrasts his present condition with his former honour and authority. What little cause have men to be ambitious or proud of that which may be so easily lost, and what little confidence is to be put in it! We should not be cast down if we are despised, reviled, and hated by wicked men. We should look to Jesus, who endured the contradiction of sinners....

Verse Job 30:13. _THEY MAR MY PATH_] They destroy the _way-marks_, so that there is no safety in travelling through the deserts, the _guide-posts_ and _way-marks_ being gone. These may be an allusion here to a besieged city: the besiegers strive by every means and way to distress the besieged; _stopping_ _up the fountains, breaking up the road, raising up towers_ to project arrows and stones into the city, called here _raising up_ _against it the ways of destruction_, Job 30:12; preventing all succour and support. _THEY HAVE NO HELPER._] "There is not an adviser among them."-Mr. _Good_. There is none to give them better instruction....

THEY MAR MY PATH - They break up all my plans. Perhaps here, also, the image is taken from war, and Job may represent himself as on a line of march, and he says that this rabble comes and breaks up his path altogether. They break down the bridges, and tear up the way, so that it is impossible to pass along. His plans of life were embarrassed by them, and they were to him a perpetual annoyance. THEY SET FORWARD MY CALAMITY - Luther renders this part of the verse, “It was so easy for them to injure me, that they needed no help.” The literal translation of the Hebrew here would be, “they profit for my ruin;” that is, they bring as it were profit to my ruin; they help it on; they promote it. A similar expression occurs in Zechariah 1:15, “I was but a little displeased, and they helped forward the afliction;” that is, th

EXPOSITION JOB 30:1 The contrast is now completed. Having drawn the portrait of himself as he was, rich, honoured, blessed with children, flourishing, in favour with both God and man, Job now presents himself to us as he is, despised of men (verses 1-10), afflicted of God (verse 11), a prey to vague terrors (verse 15), tortured with bodily pains (verses 17, 18), cast off by God (verses 19, 20), with nothing but death to look for (verses 23-31). The chapter is the most touching in the whole book. JOB 30:1 BUT NOW THEY THAT ARE YOUNGER THAN I HAVE ME IN DERISION. As Job had been speaking last of the honour in which he was once held, he beans his contrast by chewing how at present he is disgraced and derided. Men who are outcasts and solitar

THEY MAR MY PATH,.... Hindered him in the exercise of religious duties; would not suffer him to attend the ways and worship of God, or to walk in the paths of holiness and righteousness; or they reproached his holy walk and conversation, and treated it with contempt, and triumphed over religion and godliness: THEY SET FORWARD MY CALAMITY; added affliction to affliction, increased his troubles by their reproaches and calumnies, and were pleased with it, as if it was profitable as well as pleasurable to them, see Zechariah 1:15; THEY HAVE NO HELPER; either no person of note to join them, and, to abet, assist, and encourage them; or they needed none, being forward enough of themselves to give him all the distress and disturbance they could, and he being so weak and unable to resist them; nor there is "no helper against them" q; none to take Job's part

CHAPTER 30 _ 1. His present humiliation and shame (Job 30:1)_ 2. No answer from God: completely forsaken (Job 30:20) Job 30:1. He had spoken of his past greatness and now he describes his present misery. Ah! the bitterness if it--those younger than I have me in derision! Alas! through it all we hear nothing but pride. He scorns those who were so much beneath him. And those who were scourged out of the land, these children of fools and base men, mock him, the former prince among men. “I am become their song; I am a byword to them; they abhor me; they spit in my face.” Then he describes his affliction. “Days of affliction have taken hold upon me--the pains that gnaw me take no rest.” He is in the mire and has become

JOB 30. JOB'S PRESENT MISERY. As the text stands at present, Job begins by complaining that the very abjects of society now despise him. Many scholars, however, detach Job 30:2 as a misplaced section of the description of the outcasts, which we have already met in Job 24:5 f. When we look at the passage apart from Job 30:1, the impression it makes is not one of contempt for their abject condition, but of pity for their misery. Hence the greater part would have been better suited to one of Job's delineations of human wretchedness than to the picture he is painting of his own distress, from which he is diverted at a surprisingly early point (Peake). Duhm, followed by Strahan, treats...

THEY HAVE NO HELPER. they derive no help or benefit from it....

Further description of the outrageous insults of these base outcasts....