They are wet with the rain of the mountains and cling to the rock for lack of shelter.
Job is answering his friends, and instead of defending himself he points at the poor around them: no land, no wages, no roof, only a wet rock to lean against. The question under the picture is not poverty — it is why God lets such cruelty run on while Job suffers.
The People in the Picture
The verse belongs to a longer passage about a whole class of people who lived hand to mouth. One commentator works through those lines in an older translation, one that makes the wicked rich the cause: they "cause the naked to lodge without clothing":
William Kelly"They cause the naked to lodge without clothing" — that is what these wicked rich do. They have no pity for them; they make use of them for their work. "They have no covering in the cold. They are wet with the showers of the mountains, and embrace the rock for lack of shelter." This is still the poorest class, who had scarcely any regular work to do.
A closer rendering of the Hebrew sharpens both halves of the line — what the rain does to them, and what they lack:
William KellyWith the rain of mountains they are drenched, / And, shelterless, they embrace a rock.
How They Ended Up on the Mountain
They are not wanderers by choice. Job traces them back to the homes the wicked drove them from:
Samuel RidoutJob follows these poor sufferers, driven from their houses by the wicked. He describes their wretched struggle to survive in the wandering life they have been forced into (vv. 5-8). Job pictures them driven out like animals, gathering a bare living for their children as best they can. They seek work even from their oppressors, and reap their fields and glean in their vineyards. Scarcely covered with rags, they shiver in the cold and rain as they seek shelter in the rocks. "The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel," and the oppression of the poor and needy has cried to God throughout all man's history; yet God does not hear!
Why Job Raises It At All
The rock and the rain are evidence in an argument. Job's friends only assumed he must have sinned. He answers with wickedness that is out in the open and untouched:
Leslie M. GrantThese were evils publicly known to take place. Job's friends did not have any such clear charge to lay against him, but only imagined he must have done wrong. But here were cases of manifest wickedness, and God had not dealt with them as He was dealing with Job.
Job's picture runs on into the workplace, and ends with a verdict that never comes:
Leslie M. GrantCruel men would employ them to press out oil and to tread winepresses, yet not give them even enough in wages to quench their thirst. Some were groaning in the pangs of death and the souls of the wounded were crying out. "Yet," Job says, "God does not charge them (the oppressors) with wrong" (v. 12). But Eliphaz was charging Job with wrong.
The Silence That Troubled Job
Job could not square what he saw with what he believed about God, and he does not pretend to.
Samuel RidoutIt is an awful picture of facts only too well known to them — and to us. How can Eliphaz make such facts fit his theory that evil is always punished in this life? But, oh, how can God close His eyes to these things, and afflict a faithful man instead of these wrongdoers? This is Job's great trouble, and for this he has found no solution.
Job's complaint is that the day of reckoning never comes. One commentator answers that the delay has a reason:
William KellyNow Job faces this question — how is it, if the times are so bad, that the day of retribution does not come? We do not see it. It is coming; it awaits the only One who can perfectly deal with evil.
The Ones Nobody Wanted
Job could not see how this would end. The very people of verse 8 — no covering, no shelter — became the ones singled out for good news:
William KellyWhat a wonderful love it is to the very people to whom the gospel is preached. It was to the "poor" that the gospel was preached; they were especially the object of the Lord Jesus. There never was such a thing before, since the world began. Nobody ever made them his great object, and that for eternity. But Job could not know anything of that.
Summary
- Cause. These people are not unlucky. The wicked drove them from their houses into bare survival, working the fields of the men who robbed them.
- Condition. Mountain rain soaks them. With no shelter, they press against a rock — the one covering left to people robbed of clothing, wages and a roof.
- Complaint. Job uses them as evidence. Here is open wickedness God has not touched, while He afflicts a faithful man.
- Confusion. Job finds no solution here. Why God closes His eyes to such evil stays an open question.
- Coming. The day of reckoning is delayed, not cancelled. It waits for the only One who can deal with evil perfectly — and the poor of this chapter became the very people the gospel went after.