John Gill Commentary


John Gill Commentary
"They abhor me, they stand aloof from me, And spare not to spit in my face." — Job 30:10 (ASV)
They abhor me
As it is no wonder they should, since his inward and most intimate friends did, (Job 19:19); they abhorred him, not for any evil in him; Job was ready enough to abhor that himself, and himself for it, as he did when sensible of it, (Job 42:6); but for the good that was in him, spoken or done by him; which carried in it a reproof to them they could not bear; see (Amos 5:10); they abhorred him also because of his present meanness and poverty, and because of his afflictions and distresses; and particularly the diseases of his body; so Christ was abhorred by the Scribes, Pharisees and elders of the people, the three shepherds his soul loathed, and their soul abhorred him for his meanness and for his ministry: and even by the whole nation of the Jews, by the body of the people, particularly when they preferred Barabbas, a thief and a murderer, to him, (Mark 15:7Mark 15:11); see (Zechariah 11:8) (Isaiah 49:7);
they flee from me ;
as from some hideous monster, or infectious person, as if he had the plague on him, or some nauseous disease, the stench of which they could not bear; so Christ his antitype was used by: his people; when they saw him in his afflictions they hid their faces from him, did not care to look at him, or come nigh him, (Isaiah 53:3);
and spare not to spit in my face ;
not in his presence only, as some think, which is too low a sense, but literally and properly in his face, when they vouchsafed to come near him; in this opprobrious way they used him, than which nothing was a greater indignity and affront; and we need not scruple to interpret it in this sense of Job, since our Lord, whose type he was in this and other things, was so treated, (Isaiah 50:6) (Matthew 26:67) (27:20).