John Gill Commentary Job 30:19

"He hath cast me into the mire, And I am become like dust and ashes." — Job 30:19 (ASV)

He has cast me into the mire As Jeremiah was literally, this is to be understood in a figurative sense; not of the mire of sin, into which God casts none (men fall into it of themselves), but of the mire of affliction and calamity; see (Psalms 40:2) (69:2). Job here ascribes this to God, by which he was in as mean, abject, and contemptible a condition as if he had been thrown into a kennel and rolled in it. He speaks of it as an act of God, done with contempt of him and indignation at him, as he perceived it.

Some Jewish writers ^F5 interpret it, "he taught me in the mire", or "it taught me"; his disease, his ulcers taught him to sit down in the mire, or in the midst of ashes, (Job 2:8). But though this reading might admit of a good sense, as that Job was taught (as every good man is) many useful lessons in and by afflictions, yet it seems to be a sense foreign from the words.

and I am become like dust and ashes. A phrase by which Abraham expressed his vileness, meanness, and unworthiness in the sight of God, (Genesis 18:27). Job, through the force of his disease, looked like a corpse, or one half dead, and was crumbling and dropping into the dust of death and the grave, and looked livid and ash coloured; and even in a literal sense was covered with dust and ashes, when he sat among them, (Job 2:8). Though here it chiefly respects the miserable, forlorn, and contemptible condition in which he was.

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FOOTNOTES:

• F5: Vid. Jarchi & Bar Tzemach in loc.