Job 30:24

Fourth strophe God’s insensibility to Job’s prayers may have arisen from the general principle that prayers can be of no avail when once the doom of destruction shall have gone forth. The sympathy Job had ever extended to those in distress led him to expect divine succour, but in vain, since naught now remains to him but lamentation and death. Job 30:24-31.

24. Howbeit אךְ , yea. Schultens enumerates eighteen interpretations of this difficult verse. Those most worthy of consideration turn upon the meaning of בעי , which, if taken as one word, signifies prayer; if compounded, it means to the grave or in destruction. Gesenius, ( Thes., 222,) Rosenmuller, Conant, Renan, Lewis, etc., render, essentially, yea, there is no prayer where he (God) stretches out the hand; when he (God) destroys, vain is the cry for help. Literally, it reads. “If in his destruction (that of which God is author) one cries,” what then? of what avail? which is, says Dr. T. Lewis, an aposiopesis, (like that of Luke 13:9, if it bear fruit!! or the quos ego!! of Virgil,) a figure common to passionate language, in which the speaker leaves the hearer to supply a conclusion which he himself is loath to express. Comp. Psalms 94:9; Iliad, 1:26. Renan renders it, “ of what use to protest against his blows.” If instead of taking, with Jerome and Kimchi, להן , as euphonical for a masculine plural, it be read adverbially “ on this account,” (Furst,) the sense is not materially changed. The noun שׁוע , cry, corresponds to the תשׁוע of Job 24:12, “The soul of the wounded crieth out.” On the other hand, in view of the context, Ewald, Hirtzel, Dillmann, etc., translate less correctly, yet in destruction doth one not stretch out the hand? In his calamity doth he not complain thereof? Dr. Clarke gives no translation, but seems disposed to follow Bede and most of the Latins in regarding it as “a consolatory reflection, as if he had said, though I suffer here, I shall not suffer hereafter… his displeasure shall not proceed beyond the grave.”