Job 30:19

He hath cast me into the mire, and I am become like dust and ashes.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(19) He hath cast me into the mire.—He now turns more directly to God, having in Job 30:16 turned from man to his own condition—dust and ashes. This latter phrase is used but three times in Scripture: twice by Job (here and Job 42:6), and once by Abraham (Genesis 18:27).

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

30:15-31 Job complains a great deal. Harbouring hard thoughts of God was the sin which did, at this time, most easily beset Job. When inward temptations join with outward calamities, the soul is hurried as in a tempest, and is filled with confusion. But woe be to those who really have God for an enemy! Compared with the awful state of ungodly men, what are all outward, or even inward temporal afflictions? There is something with which Job comforts himself, yet it is but a little. He foresees that death will be the end of all his troubles. God's wrath might bring him to death; but his soul would be safe and happy in the world of spirits. If none pity us, yet our God, who corrects, pities us, even as a father pitieth his own children. And let us look more to the things of eternity: then the believer will cease from mourning, and joyfully praise redeeming love.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

He hath cast me into the mire - That is, God has done it. In this book the name of God is often understood where the speaker seems to avoid it, in order that it may not be needlessly repeated. On the meaning of the expression here, see the notes at Job 9:31.

And I am become like dust and ashes - Either in appearance, or I am regarded as being as worthless as the mire of the streets. Rosenmuller supposes it means, "I am more like a mass of inanimate matter than a living man."

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

19. God is poetically said to do that which the mourner had done to himself (Job 2:8). With lying in the ashes he had become, like them, in dirty color.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

He hath made me contemptible and filthy, and loathsome for my sores, my whole body being a kind of quagmire, in regard of the filth breaking forth in all its parts;

and I am become like dust and ashes, like one dead and turned to dust; more like a rotten carcass than a living man.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

He hath cast me into the mire,.... As Jeremiah was literally; here it is to be understood in a figurative sense; not of the mire of sin, into which God casts none, men fall into it of themselves, but of the mire of affliction and calamity; see Psalm 40:2; and which Job here ascribes to God; and whereby he was in as mean, abject, and contemptible a condition, as if he had been thrown into a kennel, and rolled in it; and he speaks of it as an act of God, done with contempt of him, and indignation at him, as he apprehended it. Some Jewish writers (e) interpret it, "he taught me in the mire", or "it taught me"; his disease, his ulcers taught him to sit down in the mire, or in the midst of ashes, Job 2:8; but though this reading might admit of a good sense, as that Job was taught, as every good man is, many useful lessons in and by afflictions; yet it seems to be a sense foreign from the words:

and I am become like dust and ashes; a phrase by which Abraham expresses his vileness, meanness, and unworthiness in the sight of God, Genesis 18:27; Job, through the force of his disease, looked like a corpse, or one half dead, and was crumbling and dropping into the dust of death and the grave, and looked livid and ash coloured; and even in a literal sense was covered with dust and ashes, when he sat among them, Job 2:8; though here it chiefly respects the miserable, forlorn, and contemptible condition in which he was.

(e) Vid. Jarchi & Bar Tzemach in loc.

Geneva Study Bible

{n} He hath cast me into the mire, and I am become like dust and ashes.

(n) That is, God has brought me into contempt.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

19. The verse probably refers to the appearance which Job’s body presented in its leprous condition; this was due to God, who is represented as causing it by plunging Job as it were into the mire.

19–23. God’s great severity.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 19. - He (i.e. God) hath cast me into the mire. "The mire" here is the lowest depth of misery and degradation (comp. Psalm 40:2; Psalm 69:2, 14). Job feels himself cast into it by God, but nevertheless does not forsake him nor cease to call upon him (vers. 20-23). And I am become like dust and ashes; i.e. unclean, impure, offensive to my fellow-men, an object of dislike and disdain. Job 30:19

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

16 And now my soul is poured out within me,

Days of suffering hold me fast.

17 The night rendeth my bones from me,

And my gnawers sleep not.

18 By great force my garment is distorted,

As the collar of my shirt it encompasseth me.

19 He hath cast me into the mire,

And I am in appearance as dust and ashes.

With this third ועתּה (Job 30:1, Job 30:9) the elegiac lament over the harsh contrast between the present and the past begins for the third time. The dash after our translation of the second and fourth strophes will indicate that a division of the elegy ends there, after which it begins as it were anew. The soul is poured out within a man (עלי as Job 10:1, Psychol. S. 152), when, "yielding itself without resistance to sadness, it is dejected to the very bottom, and all its organization flows together, and it is dissolved in the one condition of sorrow" - a figure which is not, however, come about by water being regarded as the symbol of the soul (thus Hitzig on Psalm 42:5), but rather by the intimate resemblance of the representation of a flood of tears (Lamentations 2:19): the life of the soul flows in the blood, and the anguish of the soul in tears and lamentations; and since the outward man is as it were dissolved in the gently flowing tears (Isaiah 15:3), his soul flows away as it were in itself, for the outward incident is but the manifestation and result of an inward action. ימי־עני we have translated days of suffering, for עני, with its verb and the rest of its derivatives, is the proper word for suffering, and especially the passion of the Servant of Jehovah. Days of suffering - Job complains - hold him fast; עחז unites in itself, like החזיק, the significations prehendere and prehensum tenere. In Job 30:17 we must not, with Arnh. and others, translate: by night it (affliction) pierces ... , for עני does not stand sufficiently in the foreground to be the subject of what follows; it might sooner be rendered: by night it is pierced through (Targ., Rosenm., Hahn); but why is not לילה to be the subject, and נקּר consequently Piel (not Niph.)? The night has been personified already, Job 3:2; and in general, as Herder once said, Job is the brother of Ossian for personifications: Night (the restless night, Job 7:3, in which every malady, or at least the painful feeling of it, increases) pierces his bones from him, i.e., roots out his limbs (synon. בּדּים, Job 18:13) so inwardly and completely. The lepra Arabica (Arab. 'l-brṣ, el-baras) terminates, like syphilis, with an eating away of the limbs, and the disease has its name Arab. juḏâm from jḏm, truncare, mutilare: it feeds on the bones, and destroys the body in such a manner that single limbs are completely detached.

In Job 30:17, lxx (νεῦρα), Parchon, Kimchi, and others translate ערקי according to the Targum. ערקין ( equals גּידים), and the Arab. ‛rûq, veins, after which Blumenf.: my veins are in constant motion. But ערקי in the sense of Job 30:3 : my gnawers (Jer. qui me comedunt, Targ. דּמעסּן יתי, qui me conculcant, conterunt), is far more in accordance with the predicate and the parallelism, whether it be gnawing pains that are thought of - pains are unnatural to man, they come upon him against his will, he separates them from himself as wild beasts - or, which we prefer, those worms (רמּה, Job 7:5) which were formed in Job's ulcers (comp. Aruch, ערקא, a leech, plur. ערקתא, worms, e.g., in the liver), and which in the extra-biblical tradition of Job's decease are such a standing feature, that the pilgrims to Job's monastery even now-a-days take away with them thence these supposedly petrified worms of Job.

(Note: In Mugir ed-dn's large history of Jerusalem and Hebron (kitâb el-ins el-gelı̂l), in an article on Job, we read: God had so visited him in his body, that he got the disease that devours the limbs (tegedhdhem), and worms were produced (dawwad) in the wounds, while he lay on a dunghill (mezbele), and except his wife, who tended him, no one ventured to come too near him. In a beautiful Kurdic ballad "on the basket dealer" (zembilfrosh), which I have obtained from the Kurds in Salihje, are these words:

Veki Gergis beshara beri

Jusuf veki abdan keri

Bikesr' Ejub kurman deri

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