For those who may wish to ‘study’ this chapter, the following simple resources are provided for you. Each passage has a four-Part approach to help you take in and think further about what you have read.

Passage: Job 30:1-15

1 ‘But now they mock me,
    men younger than I,
whose fathers I would have disdained
    to put with my sheep dogs.
2 Of what use was the strength of their hands to me,
    since their vigour had gone from them?
3 Haggard from want and hunger,
    they roamed the parched land
    in desolate wastelands at night.
4 In the brush they gathered salt herbs,
    and their food was the root of the broom bush.
5 They were banished from human society,
    shouted at as if they were thieves.
6 They were forced to live in the dry stream beds,
    among the rocks and in holes in the ground.
7 They brayed among the bushes
    and huddled in the undergrowth.
8 A base and nameless brood,
    they were driven out of the land.

9 ‘And now those young men mock me in song;
    I have become a byword among them.
10 They detest me and keep their distance;
    they do not hesitate to spit in my face.
11 Now that God has unstrung my bow and afflicted me,
    they throw off restraint in my presence.
12 On my right the tribe attacks;
    they lay snares for my feet,
    they build their siege ramps against me.
13 They break up my road;
    they succeed in destroying me.
    “No one can help him,” they say.
14 They advance as through a gaping breach;
    amid the ruins they come rolling in.
15 Terrors overwhelm me;
    my dignity is driven away as by the wind,
    my safety vanishes like a cloud.

A. Find Out

1. Who now mocks him? v.1,9
2. What had this group of people been like? v.2-8
3. How do they now treat Job? v.10
4. What also do they do? v.11-14
5. How does that leave Job feeling? v.15

B. Think:

1. How would you summarise the people who now mock Job?
2. How does this contrast with the previous chapter?

C. Comment:

In chapter 29 Job looked back on the sort of life he used to have where he knew the Lord and held a high position in society. Only in this chapter do we now realise how far he has fallen. Now he is mocked and cannot do anything about it.

Those who mock him are the younger generation (v.1a) but what is worse is that they are from the lowest of the low. Their fathers he had known and wouldn’t even want to hire as shepherds (v.1b). They were weak individuals (v.2) because of their poverty (v.3). They had been lazy (implied) and were just scavengers (v.4), outcasts of society (v.5) who had no proper place to live (v.6-8). They appeared morally and socially the equivalent of the ‘untouchables’ of India.

Now it is these people who are mocking Job; they look down on him (v.10) and don’t hold back in their mocking (v.11). Indeed, they come at him like a pack trying to bring him down (v.12) in a variety of ways, attacking his property (v.13) and keep on at him (v.14) so he is in constant fear, all dignity gone and left feeling utterly insecure (v.15).

Previously we had only understood Job’s suffering in physical pain terms, but it is far more than that. Every vestige of respect and honour has been taken from him, so he is vulnerable and derided by the lowest of the low. No longer can he defend himself; no longer can he stand upright as a pillar of society. No, he has nothing left and all that is left is derision from the dregs of society. What a terrible fall!

D. Application:

1. How much of our security comes from our station in life?
2. We dare not mock any other group in society.

Passage: Job 30:16-23

16 ‘And now my life ebbs away;
    days of suffering grip me.
17 Night pierces my bones;
    my gnawing pains never rest.
18 In his great power God becomes like clothing to me;
    he binds me like the neck of my garment.
19 He throws me into the mud,
    and I am reduced to dust and ashes.

20 ‘I cry out to you, God, but you do not answer;
    I stand up, but you merely look at me.
21 You turn on me ruthlessly;
    with the might of your hand you attack me.
22 You snatch me up and drive me before the wind;
    you toss me about in the storm.
23 I know you will bring me down to death,
    to the place appointed for all the living.

A. Find Out

1. So what does Job say is now happening to him? v.16,17
2. What does it seem God had done to him? v.18,19
3. But what does he find so frustrating? v.20
4. What does the Lord seem to do instead? v.21,22
5. And what does Job see as the outcome? v.23

B. Think:

1. How is this passage all about ‘direction’?
2. How is it a natural progression from what has gone before?
3. What does it say about Job’s hope at this point?

C. Comment:

Having turned from considering the goodness of the past (Ch.29) and having considered how he has fallen in society, Job now considers the path that seems to be before him, the state he is in and where it seems to be taking him.

It seems that his life is gradually slipping away in the face of the physical suffering he is enduring (v.16). Day and night he is in anguish, and it never lets up (v.17). It seems like God is strangling him with this illness (v.18), casting him down to nothingness (v.19).

In it all he cries out to the Lord (many others wouldn’t have even done that!) but he gets no answer, and the Lord seems to just stand there unmoving (v.20) and that seems unfair (implied). Instead of giving him an answer and restoring him (after all God restores those who turn to Him doesn’t He?) it seems that God just turns on him and attacks him further (v.21). It’s like He just keeps on and on so that Job is just blown along helplessly before this storm of affliction (v.22). It is quite obvious, he feels, that death is going to be the natural outcome to all this (v.23) and that soon (implied). Remember in all of this, it is simply what Job FEELS is happening and the lesson is to remind ourselves that often feelings are NOT a good indicator of the truth. Many of the things that Job feels and has expressed in these verses are simply not true as the opening chapters of the book reveal. Remember that.

D. Application:

1. Beware: feelings are often not an arbiter of the truth.
2. Go on what God’s word says, not on your feelings.

Passage: Job 30:24-31

24 ‘Surely no one lays a hand on a broken man
    when he cries for help in his distress.
25 Have I not wept for those in trouble?
    Has not my soul grieved for the poor?
26 Yet when I hoped for good, evil came;
    when I looked for light, then came darkness.
27 The churning inside me never stops;
    days of suffering confront me.
28 I go about blackened, but not by the sun;
    I stand up in the assembly and cry for help.
29 I have become a brother of jackals,
    a companion of owls.
30 My skin grows black and peels;
    my body burns with fever.
31 My lyre is tuned to mourning,
    and my pipe to the sound of wailing.

A. Find Out

1. What happens to a broken man? v.24
2. How is Job’s present contrasted with his past? v.25,26
3. What is his present life like? v.27
4. What does he look like? v.28,30
5. Who are his companions? v.29
6. What are his soul and spirit taken up with? v.31

B. Think:

1. How does Job contrast past and present here?
2. How physically is he described now?
3. How emotionally is he described now?

C. Comment:

Now we come to the last descriptions of Job’s plight. All that follows in the next chapter is simply about his righteousness. These verses wind up his anguish over his present state.

He directly speaks of his loneliness and isolation (v.24) that comes with brokenness and anguish. He looks back on times when he anguished for those in trouble (v.25) but now that same trouble has come upon him (v.26). He is in constant anguish which churns him up inside, faced with day after day of suffering (v.27). Whatever it is that is afflicting him has blackened his skin (v.28,30), caused his skin to peel and gives him a raging temperature, and he cries for help which never comes (implied). He has become an outcast and so lives in the wild with the wild animals and birds (v.29) and the song that he once had inside him has turned to mourning and wailing (v.31), such is his anguish.

With this outpouring we should note a couple of things. First this suffering that Satan has inflicted on Job is very real. It causes pain and discomfort in the extreme and he looks terrible. Never think of Job’s suffering as any minor thing. No, this is a major affliction bordering on death. Second, as we reflect back over the book, it makes us realise even more the insensitivity of his three ‘friends’ who never sought to feel what he felt but just harped on about his failures.

D. Application:

1. Don’t criticize someone in deep anguish. Seek to understand them.
2. Pray for their healing. Jesus did!