Job 30

Berean Standard Bible

Chapter summary

In Job 30, Job laments his complete reversal of fortune, noting that he is now mocked by younger men from impoverished and banished families whose fathers he once considered unworthy to herd his sheep. These outcasts attack him with impunity, spitting in his face, destroying his paths, and surrounding him because God has afflicted him and loosened his bow. Job states that God has cast him into the mud, tossed him in storms, and ignored his cries for help, leading him to expect death. He describes his ongoing physical suffering, including relentless bone pain, fever, and blackened skin that peels. Finally, Job recalls his past empathy for the needy, contrasting it with his current state of unending affliction, mourning, and distress.

Summary automatically generated from the Bible text.

Words of Jesus in red

¹“But now they mock me, men younger than I am, whose fathers I would have refused to put with my sheep dogs. ²What use to me was the strength of their hands, since their vigor had left them? ³Gaunt from poverty and hunger, they gnawed the dry land, and the desolate wasteland by night. ⁴They plucked mallow among the shrubs, and the roots of the broom tree were their food. ⁵They were banished from among men, shouted at like thieves, ⁶so that they lived on the slopes of the wadis, among the rocks and in holes in the ground. ⁷They cried out among the shrubs and huddled beneath the nettles. ⁸A senseless and nameless brood, they were driven off the land. ⁹And now they mock me in song; I have become a byword among them. ¹⁰They abhor me and keep far from me; they do not hesitate to spit in my face. ¹¹Because God has unstrung my bow and afflicted me, they have cast off restraint in my presence. ¹²The rabble arises at my right; they lay snares for my feet and build siege ramps against me. ¹³They tear up my path; they profit from my destruction, with no one to restrain them. ¹⁴They advance as through a wide breach; through the ruins they keep rolling in. ¹⁵Terrors are turned loose against me; they drive away my dignity as by the wind, and my prosperity has passed like a cloud. ¹⁶And now my soul is poured out within me; days of affliction grip me. ¹⁷Night pierces my bones, and my gnawing pains never rest. ¹⁸With great force He grasps my garment; He seizes me by the collar of my tunic. ¹⁹He throws me into the mud, and I have become like dust and ashes. ²⁰I cry out to You for help, but You do not answer; when I stand up, You merely look at me. ²¹You have ruthlessly turned on me; You oppose me with Your strong hand. ²²You snatch me up into the wind and drive me before it; You toss me about in the storm. ²³Yes, I know that You will bring me down to death, to the place appointed for all the living. ²⁴Yet no one stretches out his hand against a ruined man when he cries for help in his distress. ²⁵Have I not wept for those in trouble? Has my soul not grieved for the needy? ²⁶But when I hoped for good, evil came; when I looked for light, darkness fell. ²⁷I am churning within and cannot rest; days of affliction confront me. ²⁸I go about blackened, but not by the sun. I stand up in the assembly and cry for help. ²⁹I have become a brother of jackals, a companion of ostriches. ³⁰My skin grows black and peels, and my bones burn with fever. ³¹My harp is tuned to mourning and my flute to the sound of weeping.