Albert Barnes Commentary Job 30:3

"They are gaunt with want and famine; They gnaw the dry ground, in the gloom of wasteness and desolation." — Job 30:3 (ASV)

For want and famine—By hunger and poverty their strength is wholly exhausted, and they are among the miserable outcasts of society. To show the depth to which he himself had sunk in public estimation, Job describes the state of these miserable wretches. He says that he was treated with contempt by the very scum of society: by those who were reduced to the most abject wretchedness, who wandered in the deserts subsisting on roots, without clothing, shelter, or home, and who were chased away by the respectable part of the community as if they were thieves and robbers. The description is one of great power and presents a sad picture of his own condition.

They were solitary—The margin reads, or, “dark as the night.” The Hebrew word is galmûd. This word properly means “hard” and is applied to a dry, stony, barren soil. In Arabic, it means a hard rock (Umbreit). In Job 3:7, it is applied to a night in which no one is born.

Here it seems to denote a countenance that is dry, hard, and emaciated with hunger. Jerome renders it “steriles.” The Septuagint has agonos—“sterile.” Professor Lee suggests “Hardly beset.” The meaning is that they were greatly reduced—or dried up—by hunger and want. So Umbreit renders it, “gantz ausgedorrt—altogether dried up.”

Fleeing into the wilderness—This means into the desert or lonely wastes. That is, they “fled” there to obtain a scanty subsistence from what the desert produced. Such is the usual explanation of the word rendered “flee”—‛âraq.

However, the Vulgate, the Syriac, and the Arabic render it “gnawing,” and this interpretation is followed by Umbreit, Noyes, Schultens, and Good. According to this, the meaning is that they were “gnawers of the desert;” that is, they lived by gnawing the roots and shrubs they found in the desert. This idea is much more expressive and agrees with the connection.

The word occurs in Hebrew only in this verse and in Job 30:17, where it is rendered My sinews, but which may more appropriately be rendered My gnawing pains. In Syriac and Arabic, the word means to “gnaw” or “corrode” as the leading signification. Since the sense of the word cannot be determined by its usage in Hebrew, it is better to depend on the ancient versions and its use in the cognate languages.

According to this, the idea is that they picked up what scanty subsistence they could find by gnawing roots and shrubs in the deserts.

In the former time—The margin reads “yesternight.” The Hebrew word ('emesh) properly means last night, the latter part of the preceding day; it is then used to denote night or darkness in general.

Gesenius supposes that this refers to “the night of desolation,” as the pathless desert is strikingly compared by Orientals with darkness. According to this, the idea is not that they had gone into the desert only yesterday, but that they went into the shades and solitudes of the wilderness, far from the homes of men. The sense, then, is, “They fled into the night of desolate wastes.”

Desolate and waste—In Hebrew, the same word occurs in different forms, designed to give emphasis and to describe the gloom and solitariness of the desert in the most impressive manner. We would express the same idea by saying that they hid themselves in the “shades” of the wilderness.