Charles Ellicott Commentary Job 30

Whose fathers I would have disdained. —Rather, whose fathers I disdained to set. The complaint is that the children of those who were so inferior to him should treat him so.

To what purpose might the strength of their hands profit me? This is the description of the fathers; Job 30:3 and following describes their children.

The people spoken of here seem to have been somewhat similar to those known to the ancients as Troglodytes (Herodotus 4.183, etc.). These were inhabitants of caves who lived an outcast life and had their own manners and customs.

They are desolate with want and famine. They flee into the wilderness when facing impending barrenness and desolation, or when all is dark (like last night), waste, and desolate.

It is evident that Job must have been familiar with a people of this kind: an alien and proscribed race, living in the way he describes.

Among the bushes they brayed. —Herodotus says their language was like the screeching of bats; others say it was like the whistling of birds. This whole description is of the mockers of Job, and therefore should be in the present tense in Job 30:5, Job 30:7–8, as it may be in the Authorised Version of Job 30:4.

They were viler than the earth. —Rather, They are scourged out of the land, or are outcasts from the land.

And now am I their song. —See the references in the margin, which show that it is quite appropriate to give to the complaints of Job a Messianic interpretation.