Job 30:8

8 A senseless, a disreputable brood, they have been whipped out of the land.

Job 30:8 Meaning and Commentary

Job 30:8

[They were] children of fools
Their parents were fools, or they themselves were such; foolish children, or foolish men, were they that derided Job; and their derision of him was a proof of it: the meaning is not that they were idiots, or quite destitute of reason and natural knowledge, but that they were men of slender capacities; they were "Nabal like", which is the word here used of them; and, indeed, it may easily be concluded, they could not have much knowledge of men and things, from their pedigree, education, and manner of living before described; though rather this may signify their being wicked men, or children of such, which is the sense of the word "fool" frequently in the Psalms of David, and in the Proverbs of Solomon; and men may be fools in this sense, as having no understanding of divine and spiritual things, who yet have wit enough to do evil, though to do good they have no knowledge:

yea, children of base men,
or "men without a name" F19; a kind without fame, Mr. Broughton renders it; an infamous generation of men, famous for nothing; had no name for blood, birth, and breeding; for families, for power and authority among men, having no title of honour or of office; nor for wealth, wisdom, nor strength, for which some have a name; but these men had no name but an ill one, for their folly and wickedness; had no good name, were of no credit and reputation with men; and perhaps, strictly and literally speaking, were without a name, being a spurious and bastardly breed; or living solitary in woods and deserts, in cliffs and caves; they belonged not to any tribe or nation, and so bore no name:

they are viler than the earth;
on which they trod, and who are unworthy to tread upon it; and out of which their vile bodies were made, and yet were viler than that which is the basest of the elements, being most distant from heaven, the throne of God F20; they were not so valuable as some parts of the earth, the gold and silver, but were as vile as the dross of the earth, and viler than that; they were crushed and bruised, and "broken" more than the earth, as the word F21 signifies; they were as small and as contemptible as the dust of the earth and the mire of the streets, and more so; or than the men of the earth, as Aben Ezra observes, than the meanest and worst, and vilest of men: Mr. Broughton renders it, "banished from the earth"; smitten, stricken, and driven out of the land where they had dwelt, ( Job 30:5 ) ; whipped out of it, as some translate the word F23, as vagabonds; as a lazy, idle, pilfering set of people, not fit to be in human society; and by such base, mean, lowly people, were Christ and his apostles ill treated; see ( Matthew 23:33 ) ( Matthew 27:27 Matthew 27:39 Matthew 27:44 ) ( Acts 17:5 ) .


FOOTNOTES:

F19 (Mv ylb) "absque nomine", Pagninus, Montanus, Vatablus; so Beza, Mercerus, Piscator, Drusius, Michaelis, Cocceius.
F20 See Weemse's Observat. Natural. c 3.
F21 (wakn) "contriti", Montanus, Bolducius; so the Targum.
F23 "Flagellati", Schultens.

Job 30:8 In-Context

6 In the gullies of the torrents they must dwell, in holes of the earth and of the rocks.
7 Among the bushes they bray; under the nettles they huddle together.
8 A senseless, a disreputable brood, they have been whipped out of the land.
9 "And now I have become their song, I am a byword to them.
10 They abhor me, they keep aloof from me; they do not hesitate to spit at the sight of me.
Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.