Job 30:3

3 They are gaunt from poverty and hunger. They claw the dry ground in desolate wastelands.

Job 30:3 Meaning and Commentary

Job 30:3

For want and famine [they were] solitary
The Targum interprets it, without children; but then this cannot be understood of the fathers; rather through famine and want they were reduced to the utmost extremity, and were as destitute of food as a rock, or hard flint, from whence nothing is to be had, as the word signifies, see ( Job 3:7 ) ;

fleeing into the wilderness in former time desolate and waste:
to search and try what they could get there for their sustenance and relief, fleeing through fear of being taken up for some crimes committed, or through shame, on account of their miserable condition, not caring to be seen by men, and therefore fled into the wilderness to get what they could there: but since men in want and famine usually make to cities, and places of resort, where provision may be expected; this may be interpreted not of their flying into the wilderness, though of their being there, perhaps banished thither, see ( Job 30:5 ) ; but of their "gnawing" ^F17, or biting the dry and barren wilderness, and what they could find there; where having short commons, and hunger bitten, they bit close; which, though extremely desolate, they were glad to feed upon what they could light on there; such miserable beggarly creatures were they: and with this agrees what follows.

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FOOTNOTES:

F17 (hyu Myqreh) "qui rodebant in solitudine", V. L. "rodentes siccitatem", Schultens.

Job 30:3 In-Context

1 “But now I am mocked by people younger than I, by young men whose fathers are not worthy to run with my sheepdogs.

2 A lot of good they are to me— those worn-out wretches!

3 They are gaunt from poverty and hunger. They claw the dry ground in desolate wastelands.

4 They pluck wild greens from among the bushes and eat from the roots of broom trees.

5 They are driven from human society, and people shout at them as if they were thieves.