Albert Barnes Commentary Job 6:18

"The caravans [that travel] by the way of them turn aside; They go up into the waste, and perish." — Job 6:18 (ASV)

The paths of their way are turned aside - Noyes renders this, “The caravans turn aside to them on their way.” Good, “The outlets of their channel wind about.” Rosenmuller, “The bands of travelers direct their journey to them.” Jerome, “Involved are the paths of their steps.” According to the interpretation of Rosenmuller, Noyes, Umbreit, and others, this means that caravans on their journey turn aside from their regular route to find water there; in doing so, they go up into a desert and perish. According to the other interpretation, it means that the channels of the stream wind along until they diminish and come to nothing.

I take this latter to be the true sense of the passage, as it is undoubtedly the most poetical. It is a representation of the stream winding along in its channels, or making new channels as it flows from the mountain, until it diminishes by evaporation and finally comes to nothing.

They go to nothing - Noyes translates this very unusually as “into the desert,” meaning that the caravans, when they suppose they are going to a place of refreshment, actually go into a desert and thus perish. The word used here, however, תהוּ tôhû, does not occur in the sense of a desert elsewhere in the Scriptures. It denotes nothingness, emptiness, vanity , and very appropriately expresses the nothingness into which a stream vanishes when it is dried up or lost in the sand.

The meaning is that these streams wander along until they become smaller and smaller, and then wholly disappear. They deceive the traveler who hoped to find refreshment there. Streams depending on snows and storms, and having no permanent springs, cannot be relied upon.

Pretended friends are like them. In times of prosperity, they are full of professions, and their aid is offered to us. But when we need their assistance, when we are like the weary and thirsty traveler, we turn to them, only to find they vanish like deceitful streams in the sands of the desert.