Job 3:14 - Exposition

With kings and counsellers of the earth . As a great man himself, nobly born probably, Job expects that his place in another world would have been with kings and nobles (see Isaiah 14:9-11 , where the King of Babylon, on entering Sheol, finds himself among "all the kings of the nations"). Which built desolate places for themselves . Some understand "restorers of cities which had become waste and desolate;" others, "builders of edifices which, since they built them, have become desolate;" others, again, "builders of desolate and dreary piles," such as the Pyramids, and the rock-tombs common in Arabia, which were desolate and dreary from the time that they were built. The brevity studied by the writer makes his meaning somewhat obscure.