Job 30:2

He would not have set their fathers with the dogs of his flock! Just think of it. And he gives his reason. He says, "What could I gain from the strength of their hands?" Job was a wise man. If he had servants, he had servants who could do their duty. But as often happens with the most miserable of the world, they are weak. They cannot do a good day's work, or even a good hour's work.

Even in physical strength they were worthless. Want and hunger had destroyed their prime. What else could you expect from men who until now had been gnawing whatever they could find in the desert? And not in green places either, but in total waste and wilderness. They pulled up saltwort in the thickets, and found food, wretched as it was, in the roots of broom or juniper. How sad to think of such degradation for members of the human race even in those early days!

He goes on to describe the sorry condition of these mockers. "Their vigour has perished. They are gaunt from want and famine" (vv. 2-3). Job does not consider that some such people may not be to blame for their condition, but he seems to think they were not worth considering. After all, they had to scrounge their food from unhealthy sources (v. 4). Men drove them out to live in caves or clefts in the valleys (vv. 5-6). For he says, "they were sons of fools, yes, sons of vile men." Can God not save sons of vile men? Indeed He can, and often does. Should not Job have cared for others brought so low, when he himself had fallen from his former state?

Job's words about his former greatness described his generous pity for the wretched outcasts he comforted and cheered. Turning to the present, he seems to have changed places with these men, or with people like them. Now he speaks of them with no language of sympathy, but with the deepest contempt. Pride speaks of those "whose fathers I would have disdained to set with the dogs of my flock." Their elders were beneath his contempt, and now the younger men laugh at him... The wound to his pride, in having such a rabble mock him, is clearly the deepest of his mental sufferings.

We can only compare his anger at their taunts with the meekness of Him "who, when He was insulted, did not insult in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten."... But He acted as One who did not hear: He "gave His back to those who struck Him, and His cheeks to those who pulled out His hair; I did not hide my face from shame and spitting" (Isaiah 50:6). Who is it that said this? Not a man mourning over lost greatness. This was One who had given up His glory by His own choice, in love for His enemies. He could have freed Himself from His troubles at any moment, by asking His Father or by using His own power.

He mourns his terrible state. Up to now he could not hold back the thought that God dealt harshly with him, and was arbitrary. He could not understand His ways at all. He also missed the motive God had — the gracious purpose. In short, he had not reached the end of the Lord, because he had not done with himself. That is the real secret of it.