But Now

Sheepdogs were working animals, not pets, and ranked low in the ancient Near East. “Disdained” is ma'as, to reject or despise, the verb Job used of his own life in 9:21 and will use again in 42:6, “I abhor myself”. The contempt he felt for others is a word he will turn on himself.

“Old age” renders kelach, a rare word for ripe vigour that occurs elsewhere only in 5:26, where Eliphaz promised Job he would “come to thy grave in a full age”. These men never reached that fullness; worn out young, they were no use to him as labourers.

“Solitary” is galmud, gaunt or barren, the word Job used in 3:7 when he cursed the night of his conception: “let that night be solitary”. “Fleeing into the wilderness” is often read as “gnawing the dry ground”, scraping for roots in the steppe.

Mallows are probably saltwort, a salty plant that grows on marsh edges and is edible only in hunger. The juniper is the rotem, the broom tree, whose roots are bitter; Elijah sat under one in 1 Kings 19:4. These are the foods of people with nothing else.

The hue and cry after a thief was how a village drove out an intruder, everyone shouting after him. These men were expelled from the community, literally “from the midst”, and the parenthesis gives the sound of the shouting that saw them off.

“Clifts” is the old spelling of clefts. The wadis, caves and rock faces of Edom and the Arabah were places people lived in only when shut out of towns, a landscape Obadiah 3 describes as “the clefts of the rock”.

“Brayed” is nahaq, the verb Job used in 6:5, “Doth the wild ass bray when he hath grass?” These men are pictured as braying with hunger. The “nettles” are charul, thorny scrub, the weeds that take over an abandoned field in Proverbs 24:31.

“Children of base men” is literally “sons of no name”: people with no standing and no family to mention. “Fools” is naval, the word that gave Abigail's husband Nabal his name (1 Samuel 25:25). “Viler than the earth” can mean whipped out of the land.

“Song” is neginah, here a mocking ditty, as in Lamentations 3:14, “I was a derision to all my people; and their song all the day.” In 17:6 Job had already said God made him “a byword of the people”. The man whose counsel fell like rain has become a joke set to music.

Spitting in the face was a deliberate public disgrace in Israel: a widow spat in the face of the brother-in-law who refused his duty (Deuteronomy 25:9), and Numbers 12:14 treats a father's spitting as a shame lasting seven days. The rabble do not even bother to keep their distance.

The “cord” may be a bowstring, yeter: God has unstrung Job's bow. That would reverse 29:20, where his bow was renewed in his hand. Once his strength is slackened, the crowd slips its own bridle and runs at him.

The right hand was where an accuser stood in court: Satan stands at Joshua's right hand in Zechariah 3:1, and Psalm 109:6 prays “let Satan stand at his right hand.” “Youth” is a rare word meaning a brood or rabble. They trip him and build siege ramps of ruin against him.

“They have no helper” uses the same word as 29:12, where Job rescued “him that had none to help him”. The line is obscure; it may mean these attackers need no one's help, or that no one restrains them. Either way, the helpless are no longer the ones without help.

“Rolled themselves” is the verb galgal, to tumble or roll, like rubble pouring through a collapsed wall. The waters breaking through are the same kind of flood Job used for God's power in 12:15. The attack is loose, disorderly, and overwhelming.

“My soul” here is nedivati, my dignity or nobility, from the root of nadiv, a noble, the word for “the prince” in 21:28. The wind chases away his standing. “Welfare” is yeshu'ah, deliverance or safety, and it passes like a cloud that brings no rain.

A soul “poured out” is emptied like water from a jar, the image of Psalm 22:14, “I am poured out like water”, and Psalm 42:4, “I pour out my soul in me.” The days of affliction seize him, as if affliction itself had hands.

“My sinews” is literally “my gnawers”, the pains that gnaw, from the same root as the gnawing hungry men of verse 3. Night brings no relief; Job described the same in 7:4, “I am full of tossings to and fro unto the dawning of the day.”

The King James “changed” is better “disfigured”. The “collar of my coat” is the neck opening of a kuttonet, the long tunic, the same garment as Joseph's coat in Genesis 37:3. His illness has him bound as tightly as a tunic gripping at the throat.

“Dust and ashes” is the phrase Abraham used of himself while pleading for Sodom: “which am but dust and ashes” (Genesis 18:27). Job will repeat it at the very end, “I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (42:6).

Standing was the posture of a petitioner before a judge. The Hebrew of the second half has no “not”: it reads “I stand up, and thou lookest at me.” The King James carries the negative over from the first half; without it, the look is an unmoved stare rather than neglect.

“Cruel” is akhzar, the word used of the ostrich that abandons her young (Lamentations 4:3) and of anyone foolhardy enough to rouse leviathan (41:10). “Opposest thyself” is satam, to bear a grudge, the root Job used in 16:9 and a close cousin of the word satan.

Riding the wind is elsewhere an image of God's own power: he “did fly upon the wings of the wind” (Psalm 18:10). Job is tossed on it instead. The second half is best read as being melted or tossed about in the roar of the storm.

“The house appointed for all living” is beth mo'ed, literally the meeting house, using the same word as the tent of meeting. The grave is the place where every living thing has an appointment. Job no longer asks if he will die, only when.

The word for “grave” here, 'i, means a heap of ruins, as in Micah 1:6, where Samaria becomes “an heap of the field”. The general sense seems to be that no one strikes a man already lying in the rubble, and that a ruined man may at least cry out.

“Him that was in trouble” is literally one “hard of day”, a person whose day is hard. The question expects yes. Job has already said the same in 29:12–16; here he asks it as a question, as if appealing to someone to confirm it.

Jeremiah uses almost the same words for a nation's shattered hopes: “We looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of health, and behold trouble!” (8:15). The pattern of expectation reversed is what makes it sting; Job had every reason to expect good.

The bowels were the seat of feeling in Hebrew idiom, where English would say heart; they “boil” or churn. “Prevented” is 1611 English for came before, met head on, as in Psalm 18:5, “the snares of death prevented me”. The days of affliction came out to meet him.

“Mourning” is qoder, darkened or blackened, the dirty garb of grief. The phrase can also mean blackened but not by the sun: his skin is dark from disease, not from sunburn (see verse 30). He cries out in the congregation, the same public assembly where he once sat in honour.

“Dragons” are tannim, jackals, and “owls” are benot ya'anah, most likely ostriches. Both have mournful, wailing cries in desolate places, which is why Micah 1:8 pairs them: “I will make a wailing like the dragons, and mourning as the owls.” Job's only kin now howl in the desert.

The skin blackened and peeling and the bones burning with fever keep the lament in the body. Lamentations 4:8 gives a similar picture of Jerusalem's starving nobles: “Their visage is blacker than a coal... their skin cleaveth to their bones.”

The harp and organ (kinnor and ugav) are the first instruments named in the Bible, handled by Jubal in Genesis 4:21. The chapter began with others singing a mocking song about Job (verse 9); it ends with his own instruments playing only a dirge.