Job 30:29

Besides the ordinary use of the word in its literal sense, it is applied to cousins and nephews, Genesis 14:14; Leviticus 10:4; and to kinsmen generally, Exodus 2:11; 2 Kings 10:13; 2 Chronicles 22:8. It is also used where there is a moral likeness. Job 30:29; Proverbs 18:9.

A related Hebrew word takes bath in front of it, which marks the female. That gives bath yaanah, "daughter of howling." Translations render it "owl" eight times, in places such as Leviticus 11:16; Job 30:29; Isaiah 34:13; Micah 1:8. It counts as one of the unclean birds. It lives in waste places and has a wailing cry, and both fit the habits of the ostrich well.

At last we reach the end of the wail — the last of those laments that pierce the heart. He pictures himself as a lonely wanderer in the dark, a companion of beasts and birds that avoid the face of man. He might well hide from them, for his skin drops off his rotting flesh; his very bones are parched and dry.

I have become a brother to jackals, and a companion of ostriches. … My harp is turned to wailing, and my pipe to the voice of weepers.

He brings in God again. You do not answer me! Heaven had been silent to all his pleas. What a dreadful charge: "You have turned cruel to me; with the might of Your hand You persecute me"! He thinks himself completely forsaken. He does not know that God's thoughts towards him were thoughts of love and peace. His skin is black, he says, his bones are burned with heat. No joy for him, nothing but weeping.

God had given Satan permission to do his worst, short of taking his life. With cruel skill Satan reduced his body to such a state of loathsome disease as, we suppose, no man has suffered before or since. In any other case the victim would have died before so much bodily trouble could develop. Let us not judge Job harshly. In such a fearful plight as his we should probably have said far worse things than he.

So the wail ends in a song of sadness, without a note of faith. Oh, let us thank our God that Another has lifted His voice out of deeper darkness than all that pressed upon Job. His words were words of sweet assurance: "Shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?" "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!" (John 18:11; Luke 23:46). To Him — our Saviour, our Lord, our all — we turn, and learn in our grief to say, "Your will be done."

Then "the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before." … God gave a mighty increase to the animals he had, but there was also what came to him by the gifts of his brothers and acquaintances. He won back the confidence and esteem of everyone who had known him before. That is a great point, when we remember his sad complaint in Job 30 about the way people treated him.