Bible Commentaries
Job 30

Verses 1-31

Immediately Job passed to the description of his present condition, which is all the more startling as it stands in contrast with what he had said concerning the past. He first described the base who now held him in contempt. In the old days the highest reverenced him. Now the very lowest and basest held him in derision,

Now I am become their song.

They chase mine honour as the wind.

But yesterday the word of Caesar might

Have stood against the world; now lies he there, And none so poor to do him reverence.

So Shakespeare makes Mark Antony speak over the dead body of Cesar.

In the case of Job the experience was more bitter, for not only did the poor refuse to reverence him, the base despised him, and he had not found refuge in the silence of death. In the midst of this reviling of the crowd, his actual physical pain is graphically described, and the supreme sorrow of all was that when he cried to God there was no answer, but continuity of diction. He claimed that his sufferings were justification for his complaint. All this precedes the oath of innocence. Before passing to that, it may be well briefly to review the process of these final addresses. Job first protested his innocence (27:1-6). Then he poured out his wrath on his enemies (27:7-23). Following this, he declared man's inability to find wisdom (28). Finally, he contrasted his past (29) with his present (30).