Job 30:1 Commentary and Bible Study

As Job proceeds, chapter 30 is a sad display of his capacity for self-pity. What can we, who are all prone to the same problem, learn from this sorry chapter? In brief, we can learn that the worst thing with self-pity is to nourish it by rehearsing the problem. This leads only to exaggeration (verse 9) and loss of all trust in God (verses 11, 20-22).The book has previously told us of his dead livestock and blighted crops. Now the vagrants are squatting on his land, and are spitting on him, and they take his land and consider it their own. These are probably the very people he has extended benevolence to in the past: this is the final insult to Job. But maybe they would have listened as never before now that he was at their level, and he could have gained an entire new audience. Paul says, ‘For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day’ (2 Corinthians 4:16) – see how far Job needed to get from where he was to where the Apostle Paul was; there was a great gap fixed between them for the moment. Have we learnt with Paul to view afflictions like this?The severity of the change is what makes the trial so painful. Whereas before he was respected by the greatest of men and these would have ensured that lesser men showed the same respect compulsorily if not voluntarily, he is now derided openly by those whom society judges utterly worthless. In every society youth ought to honour old age, and when this honour breaks down society itself begins to crumble. Job of course knew that much of the honour shown him did not come from the heart and he was not so naïve as to think that there was a genuine respect for him in everyone, but it was a good thing that they felt constrained to show him at least outward esteem. But the ones who now mocked him were such worthless men that he would not have given their fathers work looking after his animals. They were not fit to be with his dogs let alone have let them have an audience with him.