The Pulpit Commentary — Job — Section 473

not the young prinoee of the city (oh. nix. 8), by whom he had formerly been held in reverential regard, but " the young good-for-nothing vagabonds of a miserable cl&Bi of men" (Delitzsch) dwelling in the neighbourhood. Job's inferiors in point of years, they should have treated him with honour and respect (Lev. xix. 32), especially when they beheld hi~ intense wretchedness and misery. That they failed to accord him such veneration 1\8 was due to seniority in age, and much more that they made him the but.t of their contemptuous derision, was not only an express violation of the dictates -0f nature and religion (cf. the Egyptian moral precept, "Do not mock the venerable man who is thy superior;" vi<1e ' Records of the Past,' vol. viii. p. 160), but a special mark of depravity in themselves, as well as a certain index to the social and moral degradation of the race to which they belonged. The good qualities of an advancing and the bad qualities of a retrograding people, infallibly discover themselves in the moral characteristics of the youthful portion of the community. 2. Base in respect of ancntry. (Vers. 1, 8.) The foregoing inference from the ribald behaviour of the younger men Job confirms by describing them as "children of fools, yea, children ot base men," literally, "of men without a name," and as men "whose sires" he "would have disdained to set with the dogs of his flock." It is doubtful if Job does not in this a.nd otbcr expressions of this passage (vers. 1-8) repay the contempt of his l!C£lrnful assailants with fourfold liberality, thereby failing to evince that meekness in resenting injuries which good men should study to display, and perpetrating the same offence which he imputes to others, as well as talking about his fellow-men (God's creatures and God's children no less than himself) in a way that was scarcely excusable even in a patriarchal sage. Nevertheless, what he purposes to convey through the medium of his heated, ii also poetic, language is that bis revilers were the offspring of a vile, worthless, degraded, brutalized race, who ha.d well-nigh sunk to the level of the beasts that perish. 3. Worthless in respect of service. (Ver. 2.) Like their fathers whom Job would have disdained to rank with the dogs of his flock, i.e. whom he regarded as not worthy of being compared to these wise and faithful animals who watched his sheep, they (i.e. these younger vagabonds) were idle and effeminate triflers, la.zy, worthless rascals, as little able to work as willing, the ethnic deterioration they were undergoing revea.1ing itself in enervated physical constitutions no less than in depraved moral dispositions. The truth here enunciated with regard to nations and co=unities is also true of individuals, that sin, vice, immorality, has a tendency to impair the bodily strength, mental vigour, and moral power of such as yield to its fatal fascinations. 4. Famished in respect of food. (Vers. 3, 4.) Strangely blending pity with scorn, Job informs us that in great part the feebleness of those wretched creatures, who "could bring nothing to perfection" (Cox), and were not worth employing to do the work of a shepherd's dog, was due to the difficulty they had in finding "'nourish- ment. Lean and haggard, benumbed from want and hunger, they literally gnawed the desert, picking up such scanty sustenance as the barren steppe afforded, plucking mallows in the thicket, i.e. "the salt-wort from off the stalk'' (Fry), the salt-wort, or Eea-purslain, being a tall shrubby plant which thrives in the desert as well aeon the coast, " the buds and young leaves of which " also "are gathered and eaten by the poor" (Delitzscb); and taking the roots of broom for their bread, the broom abounding in the deserts and sandy places of Egypt and Arabia, and growing to a height sufficient to afford shelter to a person sitting down. A melancholy picture of destitution, which has its counterpart not only among expiring races, effete desert tribes, and wretched 'l'roglodytes, but also in many a centre of modern civilization. It is hardly question- P.ble that in the lower strata of society in our large cities there are thousands for whom the physical conditions of life are as severe as those just depicted by the poet. 6. Outca8ts in reBpect of society. (Ver. 6.) In consequence of their pilfering and marauding habits, they were banishrd forth from the pale of the organized community. Nay, when it happened that they ventured near the precincts of civilized life, they at once became the objects of a hue and cry, men hallooing after them as they did after e. thief, and cLa,;ing them away to their own miserable haunts of poverty and vice. It is clear they were the criminal classes of patriarchal times, and were regarded with much the same abllorrence as the pariahs of modern society, who wage war against all constituted authority, prey upon the indwtry of the virtuoUB and law-abiding, and ae • OO!liequenoe live in a perpetual a~at@ of ,BOCial ostracillm. 6. Troglodytes m respect OJI, DX, 1-31.] THE BOOK OF JOB. 48t