Job 30:5

_THEY WERE DRIVEN FORTH FROM AMONG MEN, (THEY CRIED AFTER THEM AS AFTER A THIEF;)_ They cried - i:e., a cry is raised, etc. Expressing the contempt felt for this race by civilized and well-born Arabs. When these wild vagabonds make an incursion on villages, they are driven away as thieves would be....

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 30:5. _THEY WERE DRIVEN FORTH_] They were persons whom no one would employ; they were driven away from the city; and if any of them appeared, the hue and cry was immediately raised up against them. The last clause Mr. _Good_ translates, "They slunk away from them like a thief," instead of "They cried after them," c....

THEY WERE DRIVEN FORTH FROM AMONG MEN - As vagabonds and outcasts. They were regarded as unfit to live among the civilized and the orderly, and were expelled as nuisances. (THEY CRIED AFTER THEM AS AFTER A THIEF.) - The inhabitants of the place where they lived drove them out with a loud outcry, as if they were thieves and robbers. A class of persons are here described who were mere vagrants and plunderers, and who were not allowed to dwell in civilized society, and it was one of the highest aggravations of the calamities of Job, that he was now treated with derision by such outcasts....

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 WERE DRIVEN FROM AMONG [MEN],.... From towns and cities, and all civil society, as unfit to be among them; not for any good, it may be observed, but for crimes that they had done, like our felons, and transported persons: THEY CRIED AFTER THEM AS [AFTER] A THIEF; as they were driven and run along, the people called after them, saying, there goes a thief; which they said by way of abhorrence of them, and for the shame of them, and that all might be warned and cautioned against them; and, generally speaking, such as are idle and slothful, and thereby become miserable, are pilferers and thieves....

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....

2. Sorrowful description of his present sad estate (Job 30:1-31) a. The contempt he has from men of lowest class (Job 30:1-15) TEXT 30:1-15 1 BUT NOW THEY THAT ARE YOUNGER THAN I HAVE ME IN DERISION, Whose fathers I disdained to set with the dogs of my flock 2 Yea, the strength of their hands, whereto should it profit me? Men in whom ripe age is perished. 3 They are gaunt with want and famine; They gnaw the dry ground, in the gloom of wasteness and desolation. 4 They pluck salt-wort by the bushes; And the roots of the broom are their food. 5 They are driven forth from the midst _of men;_ They cry after them as after a thief; 6 So that they dwell in frightful valleys, In holes of the earth and of the rocks. 7 Among