BOOK 18 OF 66 · WISDOM & POETRY · KING JAMES BIBLE

Job 30

Job book home•Chapter 30 of 42•31 verses

Chapter overviewAt a glance + deeper study

REVIEWED OVERVIEW

Job 30 Overview

Job contrasts his former honor with present humiliation. Younger men mock him, social outcasts ridicule him, his body is wracked with pain, and he feels cast into the mire. He cries to God but experiences no answer, ending with images of mourning, darkness, fever, and isolation.

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Before you read Job 30

Coming from

Chapter 29 remembered Job’s former honor and compassionate public life.

In this chapter

The chapter plunges into the opposite condition: mockery, bodily agony, and the felt silence of God.

Leads into

Chapter 31 gives Job’s final oath of innocence, addressing specific moral areas before the debate pauses for Elihu.

Key understandingExplore deeper

Job’s language about God treating him cruelly expresses his experience, not the narrator’s final verdict on God’s character. The reader knows more than Job about the origin of his suffering, but even the reader has not yet heard God’s full answer.

Major truths in this chapterExplore deeper

Truth 1

Social humiliation can intensify physical suffering and make former dignity feel painfully distant.

Truth 2

A faithful person may experience divine silence as terrifying without thereby losing all faith.

Truth 3

Job continues to bring his complaint to God rather than severing the relationship.

Connections to the rest of ScriptureExplore deeper

Connection 1

Psalm 22 begins with a similar cry of apparent abandonment before moving toward trust and vindication.

Connection 2

Psalm 88 also preserves unresolved darkness in faithful prayer.

Connection 3

2 Corinthians 1:8 records Paul being pressed beyond strength and despairing even of life, showing that severe distress is not unique to Job.

What is clear, and where care is neededExplore deeper

Keep this clear 1

Do not quote Job’s accusation that God has become cruel as the book’s final statement about God.

Keep this clear 2

The mocking groups Job describes should not become targets for contempt; the point is Job’s reversal of status and humiliation.

Keep this clear 3

Do not assume unanswered prayer in the moment means God has abandoned the sufferer.

Read Job 30 watching for…

The contrast with Job’s former public respect.

The people who now mock him.

The bodily descriptions of pain.

Job’s cry to God and perceived silence.

The closing movement from music to mourning.

Chapter outline4 sections

1-8Job says people he once would have despised now mock him 9-15Job describes becoming their song and suffering open humiliation and attack 16-23Job describes his deep bodily suffering and cries to God without receiving the answer he wants 24-31Job remembers his compassion for sufferers but now lives in mourning and pain

But now they that are younger than I have me in derision, whose fathers I would have disdained to have set with the dogs of my flock.

Yea, whereto might the strength of their hands profit me, in whom old age was perished?

For want and famine they were solitary; fleeing into the wilderness in former time desolate and waste.

Who cut up mallows by the bushes, and juniper roots for their meat.

They were driven forth from among men, (they cried after them as after a thief;)

To dwell in the clifts of the valleys, in caves of the earth, and in the rocks.

Among the bushes they brayed; under the nettles they were gathered together.

They were children of fools, yea, children of base men: they were viler than the earth.

And now am I their song, yea, I am their byword.

They abhor me, they flee far from me, and spare not to spit in my face.

Because he hath loosed my cord, and afflicted me, they have also let loose the bridle before me.

Upon my right hand rise the youth; they push away my feet, and they raise up against me the ways of their destruction.

They mar my path, they set forward my calamity, they have no helper.

They came upon me as a wide breaking in of waters: in the desolation they rolled themselves upon me.

Terrors are turned upon me: they pursue my soul as the wind: and my welfare passeth away as a cloud.

And now my soul is poured out upon me; the days of affliction have taken hold upon me.

My bones are pierced in me in the night season: and my sinews take no rest.

By the great force of my disease is my garment changed: it bindeth me about as the collar of my coat.

He hath cast me into the mire, and I am become like dust and ashes.

I cry unto thee, and thou dost not hear me: I stand up, and thou regardest me not.

Thou art become cruel to me: with thy strong hand thou opposest thyself against me.

Thou liftest me up to the wind; thou causest me to ride upon it, and dissolvest my substance.

For I know that thou wilt bring me to death, and to the house appointed for all living.

Howbeit he will not stretch out his hand to the grave, though they cry in his destruction.

Did not I weep for him that was in trouble? was not my soul grieved for the poor?

When I looked for good, then evil came unto me: and when I waited for light, there came darkness.

My bowels boiled, and rested not: the days of affliction prevented me.

I went mourning without the sun: I stood up, and I cried in the congregation.

I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls.

My skin is black upon me, and my bones are burned with heat.

My harp also is turned to mourning, and my organ into the voice of them that weep.

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Job 30:21

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