Job 30:5 Commentary and Bible Study

How worthless were those who, together with their children, now boldly insulted him to his face! They had themselves been driven from the society of men because they were counted as vagabonds. They contributed nothing to their community and were seen only as parasites on society because they were unwilling to work or fend for themselves. They had sunk so low that their sole method of survival was to scrounge what remained from the labour of others. They were counted as thieves and so were sent packing with a shout. They were forced to survive in the most primitive of shelters, not having the wit to build themselves a proper house to live in as other people do. Job compares them to animals that bray for their food and are unable to request it with intelligent sentences. The word ‘bray’ is used in Job 6:5 of the sound made by a donkey. Job attributes blame to these men for their condition and speaks of them very differently to those who were simply poor and attracted his pity (29:12-13). They were the sons of fools and were themselves fools having been taught the most degraded principles of life.Yet it was such as these that now taunted him and dared to disdain him as contemptible. For them it was a triumph, a rare reversal of circumstances that pleased them, for they remembered how great Job had been and how well regarded. He was at the top of a social structure and they were at the bottom. Now they, like the three friends, chose to interpret his illness as a sign that God was against him and this was all the excuse they needed to turn on him and count him as one who was deservedly the object of their contempt. So famous was Job’s case that he had become a byword among the lowest of the low and the object of their scorn and ridicule. Treating Job as they had so often been treated, they indulge their hatred towards him as a kind of revenge for all the evils they had suffered at the hands of society. Job realised that he had become the most contemptible of all in the eyes of the world, not fit to be associated with, even by the dregs of humanity.