Job’s Present State Is Humiliating
“But now those younger than I amock and laugh at me,Whose fathers I refused to put with the sheepdogs of my flock.Job 12:42 “Indeed, how could the strength of their hands profit me?Vigor had perished from them.3 “They are gaunt with want and famine;They gnaw the dry and barren ground by night in the gloom of waste and desolation.4 “They pluck and eat 1saltwort among the bushes,And their food is the root of the broom shrub.I.e. a plant of the salt marshes.5 “They are driven from the community;They shout after them as after a thief.6 “They must dwell on the slopes of 1wadisAnd in holes in the ground and in rocks.I.e. gullies or valleys made by torrents of water.7 “Among the bushes they cry out like wild animals;Beneath the prickly scrub they gather and huddle together.8 “They are the sons of worthless and nameless fools,They have been driven out of the land.
9 “And now I have become the subject of their ataunting;Yes, I am a 1bbyword and a laughingstock to them.I.e. the object of cruel jokes.Job 12:4Job 17:6; Ps 69:11; Lam 3:14, 6310 “They hate me, they stand aloof from me,And do not refrain from aspitting in my face.Num 12:14; Deut 25:9; Job 17:6; Is 50:6; Matt 26:6711 “For God has loosed His bowstring attacking me and He has aafflicted and humbled me;They have cast off bthe bridle of restraint before me.Ruth 1:21; Ps 88:7Ps 32:912 “On my right the rabble brood rises;They apush my feet away, and they bbuild up their ways of destruction against me like an advancing army.Ps 140:4, 5Job 19:1213 “They abreak up and clutter my path upsetting my plans,They profit from my destruction;No one restrains them.Is 3:1214 “As through a wide breach they come,Amid the crash of falling walls they roll on over me.15 “aTerrors are turned upon me;They chase away my honor and reputation like the wind,And my prosperity has passed away blike a cloud.Job 3:25; 31:23; Ps 55:3-5Job 7:9; Hos 13:3
16 “And now amy soul is poured out within me;The days of affliction have seized me.1 Sam 1:15; Job 3:24; Ps 22:14; 42:4; Is 53:1217 “aMy bones are pierced with aching in the night season,And the pains that gnaw me take no rest.Job 30:3018 “By the great force of my disease my garment is adisfigured and blemished;It binds about me choking me like the collar of my coat.Job 2:719 “God has cast me into the amire a swampland of crisis,And I have become worthless like dust and ashes.Ps 69:2, 1420 “I acry to You for help, Lord, but You do not answer me;I stand up, but You only gaze indifferently at me.Job 19:721 “You have become harsh and cruel to me;With the might of Your hand You keep me alive only to apersecute me.Job 10:3; 16:9, 14; 19:6, 2222 “You alift me up on the wind and cause me to ride upon it;And You toss me about in the tempest and dissolve me in the storm.Job 9:17; 27:2123 “For I know that You awill bring me to deathAnd to the bhouse of meeting appointed for all the living.Job 9:22; 10:8Job 3:19; Eccl 12:5
24 “However, does not one falling in a heap of ruins stretch out his hand?Or in his disaster will he not therefore acry out for help?Job 19:725 “Did I not aweep for one whose life was hard and filled with trouble?Was not my heart grieved for bthe needy?Ps 35:13, 14; Rom 12:15Job 24:426 “When I aexpected good, then came evil to me;And when I waited for light, bthen came darkness.Job 3:25, 26; Jer 8:15Job 19:827 “I am seething awithin and my heart is troubled and cannot rest;Days of affliction come to meet me.Lam 2:1128 “I go about amourning without comfort my skin blackened by disease, not by the heat of the sun;I stand up in the assembly and bcry out for help.Job 30:31; Ps 38:6; 42:9; 43:2Job 19:729 “I am a brother to howling ajackals,And a companion to ostriches which scream dismally.Ps 44:19; Mic 1:830 “My askin falls from me in blackened flakes,And my bbones are burned with fever.Job 2:7Ps 102:331 “Therefore my alyre is used for the sound of mourning,And my flute for the sound of the voices of those who weep.Is 24:8