Job 30 Devotional

Honor Turned to Scorn

“But when I hoped for good, evil came; when I looked for light, darkness fell.”Job 30:26 (BSB)

Chapter 29 remembered honor. Chapter 30 begins with now. Men younger than Job, from families he would not have trusted with his sheepdogs, mock him in songs and spit in his face (30:1-10). Because God has afflicted him, they have thrown off all restraint (30:11). He cries out to God and gets no answer (30:20). Whenever he expected good, the opposite came (30:26). His music has turned to weeping (30:31).

There is no turn in this chapter, and none should be invented. Job had grieved for others in trouble (30:25), and now he stands up in the assembly and cries for help (30:28). Scripture lets that loneliness be spoken in full. It is also the kind of humiliation Jesus entered. Soldiers struck his head with a staff and spat on him (Mark 15:19). The Son of God did not keep his distance from scorn like Job's. He went into it himself, so that those who suffer like Job do not suffer with a Savior who is a stranger to it.

To think about: How does it help to know that Jesus entered humiliation like Job's when you face scorn or loneliness?