Job 30

Job’s Monologue, (continued.)

SECOND PART, chap. 30.

This last lament of Job deepens the plot of sorrow, but ripens it for solution. That Job should once have been honoured by the most honoured of men, now imbitters the cup which the most despicable press to his lips. Such was the systematic and cruel treatment that he received from the brutish rabble, (Troglodytes,) who lived in waddies and holes of the earth, that he compares himself to a fortified city besieged and carried by storm. God had raised him to the sky, and caused him to ride on the wind as in a chariot, that he might hurl him deeper into the abyss. It is to be remarked that though his cry of despair had failed to move God or man, (Job 30:20; Job 30:28,) he calmly holds fast to his integrity and faith, and awaits the final stroke. Somewhat similar extreme and sudden reverses of fortune are still frequent in the East. Layard, in his Nineveh, (vol. 1:49,) describes the fate of Mohammed Pasha, who was suddenly ejected from the governorship of Mosul. A dragoman found him in a dilapidated chamber, into which the rain penetrated without hinderance. “Thus it is,” said he, “with God’s creatures. Yesterday these dogs were kissing my feet; to-day, every one and every thing falls on me even the rain.”

This monologue is divided into four strophes, the last three of which commence with the same particle, ועתה , and now, (Job 30:1; Job 30:9; Job 30:16,) one of the evidences of strophic arrangement of the book.

Second division THE PITIABLE CONTRAST OF THE PRESENT JOB’S WRETCHEDNESS SET FORTH IN A FINAL LAMENTATION, chap. 30.