Charles Ellicott Commentary Job 30:24

"Howbeit doth not one stretch out the hand in his fall? Or in his calamity therefore cry for help?" — Job 30:24 (ASV)

Though they cry in his destruction. —This is a very obscure verse. Some render it: “Surely against a ruinous heap he will not put forth his hand; though it is in his destruction one may utter a cry because of these things.”

Others, understanding the word rendered “ruinous heap” differently, render it thus: “However, God will not put forth His hand to bring man to death and the grave when there is earnest prayer for them, nor even when in calamity proceeding from Him there is a loud cry for them”; that is to say, Job is understood to mean: “I know that You will dissolve and destroy me, and bring me to the grave, though You will not do so when I pray to You to release me by death from my sufferings.

“You will surely do so, but not in my time or according to my will, but only in Your own appointed time, and as You see fit.” This is one of those passages that may be regarded as hopelessly uncertain.

Each reader will make the best sense he can of it, according to his judgment. That Job should speak of himself as a ruinous heap seems very strange; neither is it at all clear what “these things” are because of which a cry is uttered.

Certainly the significance given by the other rendering is much greater. “His destruction” must mean, in any case, the destruction that comes from Him; and if this is so, the sense given is virtually that of the Authorised Version.