THE BOOK OF JOB.
The Second Part of the Monologue.--Chap. XXX.
Schema: 10. 8. 9. 8. 8. 8. 8. 8.
1 And now they who are younger than I have me in derision,
- Those whose fathers I disdained To set with the dogs of my flock.
2 Yea, the strength of their hands, what should it profit me?
- They have lost vigour and strength.
3 They are benumbed from want and hunger,
- They who gnaw the steppe,
- The darkness of the wilderness and waste;
4 They who pluck mallows in the thicket,
- And the root of the broom is their bread.
With ועתּה, which also elsewhere expresses the turning-point from the premises to the conclusion, from accusation to the threat of punishment, and such like, Job here begins to bewail the sad turn which his former prosperity has taken. The first line of the verse, which is marked off by Mercha-Mahpach, is intentionally so disproportionately long, to form a deep and long breathed beginning to the lamentation which is now begun. Formerly, as he has related in the first part of the monologue, an object of reverential fear to the respectable youth of the city (Job 29:8), he is now an object of derision (שׂחק על, to laugh at, distinct from שׂחק אל, Job 29:24, to laugh to, smile upon) to the young good-for-nothing vagabonds of a miserable class of men. They are just the same עניּי ארץ, whose sorrowful lot he reckons among the mysteries of divine providence, so difficulty of solution (Job 24:4-8). The less he belongs to the merciless ones, who take advantage of the calamities of the poor for their own selfish ends, instead of relieving their distress as far as is in their power,
