The Pulpit Commentary — Job — Section 469

EXPOSITION. CHAPTER XXX. Ver. 2.-Yea, whereto might the strength of their hand& profit me 1 Men, who had no VerB. 1--31.-The contrast is now com- such strength in their han~s ae to yield an pleted. Having drawn the portrait of hi.m- employer auy profit-poor, weak oreatu.res, aelf RS he was, rich, honoured, blessed with in whom old age (rather, manly vigour) was children, flourishing, in favour with both perished. An effete race seems to oe pointed at, without strength or stamina, nerveless, God and man, Job now presents himself to spiritless, "destined to early decay and pre- us e.s he is, despised of men (vers. 1-10), mature death ; " but how they had sunk afll,cted of God (ver. 11), a prey to vague into such a condition is not apparent. Too terrors (ver. 15), tortured with bodily pains often such remanents are merely tribes (vers. 17, 18), oe.st off by God (vers. 19, 20), physically weak, whom mor.e powerful ones have starved and stunted, driving them into with nothing bnt death to look for (vers. 23 the least productive regions, and in every -31). The chapter is the most touching in way making life hsrd for them. , the whole book. Ver. 3.-l!'or want and famine they were solitary ; rather, they were gaunt (see the Ver. 1.-But now they that are yo=ger Revised Version). Compare the desoriptions tDAll I have me in derision. As Job had given to us of the native races of Central leen speaking last of the honour in which Africa by Sir S. Baker, Speke, Grant, Stanley, he was once held, he begins his contrast by and others. Fleeing into the wilderneH ; showing how at present he is disgraced and rather, gnawing the wilder1188B; i.e. feeding derided. Men who are outcasts and solitary on such dry and sapless roots and fruits as the themselves, poor dwellers in caves (ver. 6), wildemess produces. In former time desolate who have mn«-h ado to keep body and sonl and waste; or, on the eve of WaBkmeaa aml together (vers. S, 4), and not meu only, but desolation. youths, mere boys, scoff at him, make him Ver. 4.-Who cut up mallows by the e. song and o. byword (ver. 9), nay, "spare bushes. One of the ple.nte on which they not to spit in his face" (ver. 10). There feed is the malluach, not really a "me.How," seem io have been in his vicinity weak but probably the Atriplez halimu,, which is and debased tribes, generally contemned and "e. shrub from four to five feet high, with looked down upon, regarded ae thieves (,·er. many thick branches; the leaves are rather 5) by their neighboura, aud considered to be llOUr to the taste; the flowers are purple, of bwie and vile origin (ver, 8), who saw in and very email ; it grows on the sea-ooaec Joh' rl ce.lamiti.es a re.re opportunity for insult- in Greece, Arabia, Syria, etc., o.nd belongs ing and triu,nphing O\'er a member of the to the natural order CherwpodiacetB " (see superior race which had crushed them, and Smith'd 'Diet. of the Dible,' vol. ii. p. 215). thw; tasting, to a certain extent, the sw1;et- And juniper roots for their meat, Most ness of 1·evenge. Whose fathers I would moderns regard the rotluJn ae the GeniBta have di&dained (rather, I diBdained) to have morwBperma, which is o. kind of broom. It set with the dogs of my 11.ook. Job had not is a leguminous P,lant, having a white flower, thought their fathers worthy of employ- and grows plentifully in the Sinaitio desert, ing even 8B the loweet class of herdsmen, in f"alestine, Syria, and Arabia. The root tl,o..., reckoned on a plil" with the sheep- is very bitter, and would only be used aa dogob. food under extreme pressure, but the fruit  mr. :rxx. 1-81,] THE BOOK OF Jon. 48/i