Job 20:19, 30:3-6, Pro 28:28 | JFB | STEP | 19. oppressed —whereas he ought to have espoused their cause ( ). forsaken —left helpless. house —thus leaving the poor without shelter ( ).

Job 20:19

19. oppressed—whereas he ought to have espoused their cause (2Ch 16:10).

forsaken—left helpless.

house—thus leaving the poor without shelter (Isa 5:8; Mic 2:2).

Job 30:3-6

3. solitary—literally, "hard as a rock"; so translate, rather, "dried up," emaciated with hunger. Job describes the rudest race of Bedouins of the desert [UMBREIT].

fleeing—So the Septuagint. Better, as Syriac, Arabic, and Vulgate, "gnawers of the wilderness." What they gnaw follows in Job 30:4.

in former time—literally, the "yesternight of desolation and waste" (the most utter desolation; Eze 6:14); that is, those deserts frightful as night to man, and even there from time immemorial. I think both ideas are in the words darkness [GESENIUS] and antiquity [UMBREIT]. (Isa 30:33, Margin).

4. mallows—rather, "salt-wort," which grows in deserts and is eaten as a salad by the poor [MAURER].

by the bushes—among the bushes.

juniper—rather, a kind of broom, Spartium junceum [LINNÆUS], still called in Arabia, as in the Hebrew of Job, retem, of which the bitter roots are eaten by the poor.

5. they cried—that is, "a cry is raised." Expressing the contempt felt for this race by civilized and well-born Arabs. When these wild vagabonds make an incursion on villages, they are driven away, as thieves would be.

6. They are forced "to dwell."

cliffs of the valleys—rather, "in the gloomy valleys"; literally, "in the gloom of the valleys," or wadies. To dwell in valleys is, in the East, a mark of wretchedness. The troglodytes, in parts of Arabia, lived in such dwellings as caves.

Proverbs 28:28

28. The elevation of the wicked to power drives men to seek refuge from tyranny (compare Pr 28:12; 11:10; Ps 12:8).