Job 30:4

_WHO CUT UP MALLOWS BY THE BUSHES, AND JUNIPER ROOTS FOR THEIR MEAT._ Mallows - rather, salt wort, which grows in deserts, and is eaten as a salad by the poor, having a salt taste (Maurer). BY THE BUSHES - among the bushes. JUNIPER - rather, a kind of broom, spartium junceum (Linnoeus), still called Arabia, as in the Hebrew of Job, Retem, of which the bitter roots are eaten by the poor....

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 30:4. _WHO CUT UP MALLOWS BY THE BUSHES_] מלוח _malluach_, which we translate _mallows_, comes from מלח _melach, salt_; some herb or shrub of a salt nature, sea-purslane, or the salsaria, salsola, or saltwort. _Bochart_ says it is the αλιμος of the Greeks, and the _halimus_ of the Romans. Some translate it _nettles_. The _Syriac_ and _Arabic_ omit the whole verse. The halimus, or _atriplex_ _halimus_, grows near the sea in different countries, and is found in Spain, America, England, and Barbary. The _salsaria, salsola_, or _saltwort_, is an extensive genus of plants, several common to Asia, and not a few indigenous to a dry and sandy soil. _AND JUNIPER ROOTS_ FOR _THEIR MEAT._] רתמים _rethamim_. This is variously translated _juniper, broom, furze, gorse_, or whin

WHO CUT UP MALLOWS - For the purpose of eating. Mallows are common medicinal plants, famous for their emollient or softening properties, and the size and brilliancy of their flowers. It is not probable, however, that Job referred to what we commonly understand by the word mallows. It has been commonly supposed that he meant a species of plant, called by the Greeks Hallimus, a sunfish plant, or “salt wort,” growing commonly in the deserts and poor land, and eaten as a salad. The Vulgate renders it simply _“herbas;”_ the Septuagint, ἄλιμα _alima_. The Hebrew word, according to Umbreit, means a common salad of a saltish taste, whose young leaves being cooked, constituted food for the poorer classes. The Hebrew word מלוח _mallûach_ is from מלח _mâlach_, “salt,” and properly refers to a marine plant or vegetable....

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

WHO CUT UP MALLOWS BY THE BUSHES,.... Which with the Troglodytes were of a vast size r; or rather "upon the bush" s or "tree"; and therefore cannot mean what we call mallows, which are herbs on the ground, and grow not on trees or bushes; and, besides, are not for food, but rather for medicine: though Plutarch t says they, were the food of the meaner sort of people; so Horace u speaks of them as such; and the word in the original is near in sound to a mallow; but it signifies something salt, wherefore Mr. Broughton renders it "salt herbs"; so Grotius, such as might grow by the seaside, or in salt marshes; and in Edom, or Idumea, where Job lived, was a valley of salt, see 2 Kings 14:7. Jarchi says it is the same with what the Syrians in their language call "kakuli", which with them is a kind of pulse; but what the Turks at this day call "kakuli" is a kind of salt herb, like to "alcali", w...

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...

Description of this wretched class of outcasts. The _tenses_should all be put in the present. The race of people referred to appears to be the same as that in ch. 24....

WHO CUT UP MALLOWS, &C.— Or, _Sea-purslane._ The word rendered _juniper_ signifies the _broom,_ or _birch-tree._ See 1 Kings 19:4. These were, without doubt, the meanest kinds of foods and made use of only when no other could be procured....