John Gill Commentary Job 30

But now [they that are] younger than I have me in derision, &c.] Meaning not his three friends, who were men in years, and were not, at least all of them, younger than he (see Job 15:10, Job 32:6, Job 32:7); nor were they of such a mean extraction, and such low-lived creatures, and of such characters as here described; with such Job would never have held a correspondence in the time of his prosperity; both they and their fathers, in all appearance, were both great and good; but these were a set of profligate and abandoned wretches, who, as soon as Job's troubles came upon him, derided him, mocked and jeered at him, both by words and gestures; and which they might do even before his three friends came to him, and during their seven days' silence with him, and while this debate was carrying on between them, encouraged to it by their behaviour towards him.

To be derided by any is disagreeable to flesh and blood, though it is the common lot of good men, especially in poor and afflicted circumstances, and to be borne patiently; but to be so used by junior and inferior persons is an aggravation of it; as Job was, even by young children, as was also the prophet Elisha (2 Kings 2:23); see Job 19:18.

whose fathers I would have disdained to have set with the dogs of my flock; either to have compared them with the dogs that kept his flock from the wolves, having some good qualities in them which they had not; for what more loving or faithful to their masters, or more vigilant and watchful of their affairs? or to set them at meat with the dogs of his flock; they were unworthy of it, though they would have been glad of the food his dogs ate of, they living better than they, whose meat were mallows and juniper roots (Job 30:4); and would have jumped at it; as the prodigal in want and famine, as those men were, would fain have filled his belly with husks that swine did eat; but as no man gave them to him, so Job disdained to give the meat of his dogs to such as those.

Or to set them "over" ^F13 the dogs of his flock, to be the keepers of them, to be at the head of his dogs, and to have the command of them (see 2 Samuel 3:8); or else to join them with his dogs, to keep his flock with them; they were such worthless faithless wretches, that they were not to be trusted with the care of his flock along with his dogs. It was usual in ancient times, as well as in ours, for dogs to be used to keep flocks of sheep from beasts of prey, as appears from Orpheus ^F14, Homer ^F15, Theocritus ^F16, and other writers: and if the fathers of those that derided Job were such mean, base, worthless creatures, what must their sons be, inferior to them in age and honour, if any degree of honour belonged to them?

FOOTNOTES:

• F13: (yblk Me) "super canes", Noldius, p. 739. No. 1825.
• F14: De Lapidibus, Hypoth. ver. 53, 54.
• F15: Iliad. 10. (wv kunev peri mhla) v. 183. & Iliad 12. v. 303.
• F16: (c' amin esti kuwn filopoimniov) Idyll. 5. v. 106. & Idyll. 6. v. 9, 10.

Yea, whereto [might] the strength of their hands [profit] me ,
&c.] For though they were strong, lusty, hale men, able to do business, yet their strength was to sit still and fold their hands in their bosoms, so that their strength was of no profit or avail to themselves or others; they were so slothful and lazy, that Job could not employ them in any business of his to any advantage to himself; and this may be one reason, among others, why he disdained to set them with the dogs of his flock to keep it; for the fathers seem to be intended all along to (Job 30:8); though it matters not much to which of them the words are applied, since they were like father like son:

in whom old age was perished ?
who did not arrive to old age, but were soon consumed by their lusts, or cut off for their sins; and so the strength and labour of their hands, had they been employed, would have been of little worth; because the time of their continuance in service would have been short, especially being idle and slothful: some understand it of a lively and vigorous old age, such as was in Moses; but this being not in them, they were unfit for business, see (Job 5:26); or they had not the endowments of old age, the experience, wisdom, and prudence of ancient persons, to contrive, conduct, and manage affairs, or direct in the management of them, which would make up for lack of strength and labour. Ben Gersom, Bar Tzemach, and others, interpret the word of time, or the time of life, that was perished or lost in them; their whole course of life, being spent in sloth and idleness, was all lost time.

For want and famine [they were] solitary
The Targum interprets it, without children; but then this cannot be understood of the fathers; rather through famine and want they were reduced to the utmost extremity, and were as destitute of food as a rock, or hard flint, from where nothing is to be had, as the word signifies, see (Job 3:7) ;

fleeing into the wilderness in former time desolate and waste :
to search and try what they could get there for their sustenance and relief, fleeing through fear of being taken up for some crimes committed, or through shame, on account of their miserable condition, not caring to be seen by men, and therefore fled into the wilderness to get what they could there: but since men in want and famine usually make to cities, and places of resort, where provision may be expected; this may be interpreted not of their flying into the wilderness, though of their being there, perhaps banished thither, see (Job 30:5) ;

but of their "gnawing" ^F17 , or biting the dry and barren wilderness, and what they could find there; where having short commons, and hunger bitten, they bit close; which, though extremely desolate, they were glad to feed upon what they could light on there; such miserable beggarly creatures were they: and with this agrees what follows.

FOOTNOTES:

• F17: (hyu Myqreh) "qui rodebant in solitudine", V. L. "rodentes siccitatem", Schultens.

Who cut up mallows by the bushes
Which with the Troglodytes were of a vast size ^F18 ; or rather "upon the bush" ^F19 or "tree"; and therefore cannot mean what we call mallows, which are herbs on the ground, and grow not on trees or bushes; and, besides, are not for food, but rather for medicine: though Plutarch ^F20 says they were the food of the meaner sort of people; so Horace ^F21 speaks of them as such; and the word in the original is near in sound to a mallow; but it signifies something salt, wherefore Mr. Broughton renders it "salt herbs"; so Grotius, such as might grow by the seaside, or in salt marshes; and in Edom, or Idumea, where Job lived, was a valley of salt, see (2 Kings 14:7) . Jarchi says it is the same with what the Syrians in their language call "kakuli", which with them is a kind of pulse; but what the Turks at this day call "kakuli" is a kind of salt herb, like to "alcali", which is the food of camels ^F24 the Septuagint render the word by "alima"; and, by several modern learned men, what is intended is thought to be the "halimus" of Dioscorides, Galen, and Avicenna; which is like unto a bramble, and grows in hedges and maritime places; the tops of which, when young and tender, are eaten, and the leaves boiled for food, and are eaten by poor people, being what soon filled the belly, and satisfied; and seem to be the same the Moors call "mallochia", and cry about the streets, as food for the poor to buy ^F25 : however it appears upon the whole to be the tops or leaves of some sort of shrub, which Idumean people used to gather and live upon.

The following story is reported in the Talmud ^F26 concerning King Jannai, who went to Cochalith in the wilderness, and there subdued sixty fortified towns; and, upon his return, he greatly rejoiced, and called all the wise men of Israel, and said unto them, our fathers ate "malluchim" (the word used in this text of Job) at the time they were employed in building the sanctuary; so we will eat "malluchim" on remembrance of our fathers; and they set "malluchim" on tables of gold, and they ate; which the gloss interprets herbs; the name of which, in the Syriac language, is "kakuli"; the Targum is, who plucks up thorns instead of eatable herbs. Some ^F1 render the word "nettles", see (Job 30:7) ;

juniper roots [for] their meat ,
or "bread" ^F2 ; with the roots of which the poor were fed in time of want, as Schindler ^F22 observes: that bread may be, and has been made out of roots, is certain, as with the West Indians, out of the roots of "ages" and "jucca" ^F3 ; and in particular juniper roots in the northern countries have been used for bread ^F4 ; and there were a people in Ethiopia above Egypt, who lived upon roots of reeds prepared, and were called "rhisophagi" ^F5 , "root eaters": some render the words, "or juniper roots to heat", or "warm with" ^F6 , as the word is used in (Isaiah 47:14) ; and coals of juniper have in them a very great and vehement heat, see (Psalms 120:3Psalms 120:4) ; but if any part of the juniper tree was taken for this purpose, to warm with when cold, one should think the branches, or the body of the tree, should be cut down, rather than the roots dug up:

another sense is given by some {g}, that meat or bread is to be understood of the livelihood these persons got by digging up juniper roots, and selling them: there are others that think, that not the roots of juniper, but of "broom" ^F8 , are meant, whose rape, or navew, or excrescence from the roots of it, seem to be more fit food. All this agrees with the Troglodytes, whom Pliny ^F9 represents as thieves and robbers, and, when pressed with famine, dig up herbs and roots: cutters of roots are reckoned among the worst of men by Manetho ^F11 .

FOOTNOTES:

• F18: Diodorus Siculus, l. 3. p. 175.
• F19: (xyv yle) "super virgulto", Montanus, Schultens; "super arbustum", Bochart.
• F20: In symposio septem sap.
• F21: "-----me pascunt olivae. Me cichorea levesque malvae". Carmin. l. 1. Ode. 31. & Epod. Ode. 2.
• F24: Scheuchzer. Physic. Sacr. vol. 4. p. 760.
• F25: lbid. vid. Reinesium de Lingua Punic. c. 9. S. 20, 21.
• F26: T. Bab. Kiddushin, fol. 66. 1.
• F1: David de Pomis Lexic. fol. 80. 3.
• F2: (Mmxl) "panis eorum", Montanus, Michaelis, Schultens.
• F22: Lexic. col. 1775.
• F3: Pet. Martyr. de Angleria, decad. 1. l. 1.
• F4: Olaus Magnus, de Ritu Gent. Septent. l. 12. c. 4.
• F5: Diod. Sic. l. 3. p. 159.
• F6: "Ad calefaciendum se", Pagninus; so Kimchi, Sepher Shorash rad, (Mmx) .
• F8: (Mymtr vrv) "radix genistarum", Michaelis, Schultens; so some in Mercerus, Drusius, & Gussetius, p. 839.
• F9: Nat. Hist. l. 37. c. 8.
• F11: Apotelesm. l. 5. v. 183.

They were driven from among [men]
From towns and cities, and all civil society, as unfit to be among them; not for any good, it may be observed, but for crimes that they had done, like our felons, and transported persons:

they cried after them as [after] a thief ;
as they were driven and run along, the people called after them, saying, there goes a thief; which they said by way of abhorrence of them, and for the shame of them, and that all might be warned and cautioned against them; and, generally speaking, such as are idle and slothful, and thereby become miserable, are pilferers and thieves.