Job 30:4

A common herb that the poor would eat to satisfy their hunger. Job 30:4. Several have judged the herb to be the Atriplex halimus. It has a sour taste, but not so sour that people could not eat it.

This word is thought to mean, not the juniper, but the Arabic ratam, the Retama raetam. It is a "broom" that grows twelve feet high, and a person could sit under it for shelter. 1 Kings 19:4-5. Job 30:4 mentions its roots, which the poor used for food.

What else could you expect from people who until now had been gnawing whatever they could find in the desert? And this was not in pleasant country, but in waste and wild land with no relief. They plucked saltwort in the thickets when they could find it, and they found food, wretched as it was, in roots of broom or juniper. How sad to think of such degradation for members of the human race even in those early days! We usually link outcasts like these with the crowded dens of shame and crime in some great city. They were there in those days too, behind the scenes of desert life.

Job does not consider that some of these people may not be to blame for their condition. They have to scrounge their food from unhealthy sources (v.4). Other men drive them out to live in caves or clefts in the valleys (vv.5-6). Job seems to think this makes them not worth considering, for he calls them sons of fools, sons of vile men. Can God not save sons of vile men? Indeed He can, and often does. Should Job not have cared about others brought so low, especially 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 brought them comfort and cheer. Now, in the present, he seems to have changed places with these people, or with people like them. This time he speaks of them not with the language of sympathy, but with deepest contempt. It is a sad picture of pride, which grows bitter as it dwells on its wrongs.

He spoke before of delivering the poor and the fatherless and those who had no helpers (ch. 29:12). Was it love for them that really moved him? If so, where was his love for this class of people, whom he had apparently looked at with contempt? Now they are treating him with contempt, and he feels deeply insulted. Again this shows the pride that Job needed to have broken down, and which was indeed broken down later.

We can only compare his anger at their taunts with the meekness of Him "who when He was reviled, did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten."... Who is it that said this? Not a man mourning his lost greatness, but 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 an appeal to His Father or by putting forth His own power.