Job 30:3

3 Haggard from want and hunger, they roamed^[a] the parched land in desolate wastelands at night.

Job 30:3 in Other Translations

3 For want and famine they were solitary; fleeing into the wilderness in former time desolate and waste.

3 Through want and hard hunger they gnaw the dry ground by night in waste and desolation;

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

3 Half-starved, scavenging the back alleys, howling at the moon;

3 Emaciated from poverty and hunger, they gnawed the dry land, the desolate wasteland by night.

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 they mock me, men younger than I, whose fathers I would have disdained to put with my sheep dogs.

2 Of what use was the strength of their hands to me, since their vigor had gone from them?

3 Haggard from want and hunger, they roamed the parched land in desolate wastelands at night.

4 In the brush they gathered salt herbs, and their food was the root of the broom bush.

5 They were banished from human society, shouted at as if they were thieves.

Cross References

• 1. Isaiah 8:21
• 2. Job 24:5
• 3. Jeremiah 17:6

Footnotes

• [a]. Or "gnawed"