Job 30:1
But now they that are younger than I have me in derision, whose fathers I would have disdained to have set with the dogs of my flock.
But now they that are younger than I have me in derision,.... Meaning not his three friends, who were men in years, and were not, at least all of them, younger than he, see Job 15:10; nor were they of such a mean extraction, and such low-lived creatures, and of such characters as here described; with such Job would never have held a correspondence in the time of his prosperity; both they and their fathers, in all appearance, were both great and good; but these were a set of profligate and abandoned wretches, who, as soon as Job's troubles came upon him, derided him, mocked and jeered at him, both by words and gestures; and which they might do even before his three friends came to him, and during their seven days' silence with him, and while this debate was carrying on between them, encouraged unto it by their behaviour towards him; to be derided by any is disagreeable to flesh and blood, though it is the common lot of good men, especially in poor and afflicted circumstances, and to be bore patiently; but to be so used by junior and inferior persons is an aggravation of it; as Job was, even by young children, as was also the prophet Elisha, 2 Kings 2:23; see Job 19:18;
whose fathers I would have disdained to have set with the dogs of my flock; either to have compared them with the dogs that kept his flock from the wolves, having some good qualities in them which they had not; for what more loving or faithful to their masters, or more vigilant and watchful of their affairs? or to set them at meat with the dogs of his flock; they were unworthy of it, though they would have been glad of the food his dogs ate of, they living better than they, whose meat were mallows and juniper roots, Job 30:4; and would have jumped at it; as the prodigal in want and famine, as those men were, would fain have filled his belly with husks that swine did eat; but as no man gave them to him, so Job disdained to give the meat of his dogs to such as those; or to set them "over" {m} the dogs of his flock, to be the keepers of them, to be at the head of his dogs, and to have the command of them; see the phrase in 2 Samuel 3:8; or else to join them with his dogs, to keep his flock with them; they were such worthless faithless wretches, that they were not to be trusted with the care of his flock along with his dogs. It was usual in ancient times, as well as in ours, for dogs to be made use of in keeping flocks of sheep from beasts of prey, as appears from Orpheus {n}, Homer {o}, Theocritus {p}, and other writers: and if the fathers of those that derided Job were such mean, base, worthless creatures, what must their sons be, inferior to them in age and honour, if any degree of honour belonged to them?
{m} yblk Me "super canes", Noldius, p. 739. No. 1825.
{n} De Lapidibus, Hypoth. ver. 53, 54.
{o} Iliad. 10. wv kunev peri mhla, &c. v. 183. & Iliad 12. v. 303.
{p} c' amin esti kuwn filopoimniov, &c. Idyll. 5. v. 106. & Idyll. 6. v. 9, 10.