Bible Commentary - Job 30

In this chapter, Job describes his present suffering, which is compared to his previous blessing.

The main purpose of this chapter is to compare and contrast his present suffering with his previous blessing.  I think it’s clear that chapters 29 and 30 are very closely tied in this way and we should really be reading them together when analyzing Job’s speech.  It’s also clear that Job is trying to show a reversal of fortunes, where he was previously blessed but now he is suffering (or cursed, if you prefer a stronger term).  This heightens the contrast between his past and present circumstances, and it also frames his life in terms of divine, sovereign intervention.  For a reference point, we saw numerous reversals of fortune in the book of Esther, and in that case a reversal of fortune was considered the hallmark of God’s activity.  In this passage, both Job and his friends directly attribute his suffering to God, so I think the reversal of fortune is more likely a literary device used to highlight the differences between his past and present.

More specifically, the previous chapter established Job’s blessings in the sense that he was deeply respected at the city gates and everyone would wait silently to hear his words, like they were waiting “for the spring rain” (Job 29:23).  Job was also blessed through his “friendship” with God, who “was yet with me” everywhere he went (Job 29:4-5).  We saw Job living in tremendous prosperity and ease as God’s hand was over him to protect and uplift him (Job 29:6).

In Job’s present life, all of these blessings are reversed.  While before he was honored by nobles and princes, the highest men in society, Job describes his present dishonor at great length.  Verses 1-15 describe how the scum of the earth now mock him and spit at him.  These young men “are driven from the community” (v. 5) and are living out in the desert.  Now they are preying on Job like vultures, “profiting from my destruction” (v. 13), though it’s not clear to me how.  Job has already lost everything so I don’t know how much more can be stolen from him at this point, but from the text it seems that Job feels assailed by these despised men.  While he was previously honored by the greatest men, he is now despised and mocked by the least.

Secondly, Job also feels like his friendship with God has turned into enmity.  In verses 19-23, Job cries out to God for help, but instead finds God both “cruel” and a “persecutor”.  God has transformed from the light shining over his paths and the friendship covering his tent to his persecutor, attacking him like a hostile army.  This is the root cause for all of Job’s suffering, but he calls it out specifically (both in the past and present narratives).

Thirdly, Job was previously blessed with prosperity, riches and food (Job 29:6), and now suffering with disease and poverty (v. 23-31).  He doesn’t specifically mention poverty but I think it can be reasonably implied from context in the rest of the book and the general tone of Job’s discourse.

In Esther we saw reversals of fortune that were deserved and a reflection of divine justice, such as the downfall of Haman or the blessing and uplifting of Mordecai.  In Job, we see a reversal of fortune that defies logic.  The righteous Job is reduced from blessings to curses, from good things to bad, and he is struggling to understand why.  As Job himself puts it, “when I expected good, then evil came” (v. 26).  This is the fundamental paradox of the book of Job, and in this chapter we see Job himself struggling with it, trying to understand why everything has gone so wrong when he has done nothing evil to deserve it.

In a sense we could say that Job already answered the question back in chapter 28 when he asserted that wisdom was to fear the Lord and avoid evil, so it’s not like Job is asking for counsel here.  Rather, Job is simply lamenting his present suffering and everything he has lost.  That was all he was trying to do originally back in chapter 3, but his friends took it as a challenge to their theology so they criticized and rebuked him as a consequence.  Since he has responded to their criticism and rejected their rebukes, Job has returned to his original thought, which was to simply lament over his suffering as anyone would.

In the next chapter, Job concludes his statement by calling down curses upon himself if he has ever sinned in the ways that his friends have accused him.