Ver. 1. But now they that are younger than I have me in derision] Id quod ei morbo suo longe gravius fuerit, sicut et Hebraei testantur, saith Mercer. This troubled him much more than all his sores and sicknesses; that every young shackrag slighted him, and laughed him to scorn. In this case especially, — Faciles motus mens generosa capit (Ovid). You shall find some, saith Erasmus, that if death be threatened, can despise it; but to be despised or belied they cannot brook; but least of all by base persons: Quilibet ab aquila quam corvo discerpi mavult. Job was now grown ancient, and had been honourable, as he had set forth, Job 29. Old age and honour, in the Greek tongue, are near akin, Cognata sunt, γηρας et γερας, ut ηθος et εθος; and, Summa fuit quondam capitis reverentia cani: Inque sue precio ruga senilis erat. But it is a sign of gasping devotion, and that things are far out of order, when the child behaveth himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honourable, Isaiah 3:5, as at Bethel, where those poorly bred children derided the old prophet, and petulantly cried after him, “Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head,” 2 Kings 2:23. If the like unworthy usage befall us, let it suffice us that our betters, Job, David, Christ himself, have sped no better. Art not thou glad to fare as Phocion? said he to a lowly man that was to die with him. Whose fathers I would have disdained to have set with the dogs of my flock] i.e. To have made my dog keepers, that they might feed with them, as the prodigal son did with the swine. Dogs are commonly looked upon as paltry carrion creatures; only some, for their mind’s sake, and others, for certain necessary uses, as shepherds and hunters, make some reckoning of them. It was not permitted to a dog to enter into the Acropolis, or tower of Athens, for his libidinousness and ill savour, δια του ακολαστου και δυσωδους (Plut.). At Rome they crucified a dog yearly, in detestation of those dogs in the capitol that gave not warning of the approach of an enemy. Job, it seems, had his dog feeders, men of meanest account. Now these men’s sons, a beggarly breed, and very rascals, insulted and trampled upon this precious man, dealt as basely and coarsely with him, haply, as those factious fellows in Geneva did with reverend Calvin; whom they not only in contempt called Cain (as Athanasius was sometimes by his enemies called Sathanasius; and Cyprian, Coprian, that is, a dunghill fellow), but also named their dogs Calvin, as Beza, in his Life, reporteth.
Ver. 2. Yea, whereto might the strength of their hands profit me] For, to say the truth (thus Beza here paraphraseth), the strength of those young striplings could not have stood me in any stead at all; and as for the old age of their fathers, it were such, that, having spent the greatest and best part of their life partly in idleness, and partly in divers wicked and lewd pranks, they might worthily seem to have lived in vain all that while. Thus he. The Greeks say, Εργα νεων, and the Latins, Iuniores ad labores, young men are fit for hard labour, because strong and lusty. But these Sanuiones in the text were, through idleness, mere nullities in the world, superfluities in the earth, Jeremiah’s rotten girdle, good for nothing but to devour victuals; vermin, apes, monkeys, their whole life was to eat and drink (when they could come by it), and sleep, and sport, and fleer, jeer at God’s afflicted, with words as full of scorn as profane wit or rancoured malice can make them. These are excrements in human society; pests, the Scripture styleth them, Psalms 1:1 (λοιμοι. Septuag.). In whom old age was perished?] Their fathers also were old dottrels, in ipsa senectute, senectute carentes, old, but not wise (Moriae Encore.); like the Brabanti, who are said to be the older the foolisher. Some men live long, but are good for little. Non ille diu vixit, sed diu fuit, saith Seneca of somebody, He hath not lived long, but only been long; as a ship in a storm, he hath been tossed much, but sailed nothing. Those old men who have not gotten wisdom by long experience are not worthy of their years; their old age is perished, and their honour forfeited. The Vulgate rendereth it, They were reckoned unworthy of life itself: Depontani.
Ver. 3. For want and famine they were solitary] Miserably poor they were, and nittily needy; scarce having a rag to their backs, and, therefore, ashamed to show themselves in company of others, propter penuriam, et propter esuriem, they lurked in bycorners, and seldom came abroad, unless when hard hunger drove the wolf out of the wood. Slow bellies they had ever been, and evil beasts, fitter, therefore, to live in the wilderness, in former time desolate and waste, than in a civil society; or, if in any place, at Poneropolis, a city built by Philip, king of Macedonia, for varlets and vagrants, and with such kind of persons peopled; that they might not pester other places. Job would have none such about him; and was, therefore, haply, now in this low condition, so much hated and affronted by them. In former time desolate and waste] And so perhaps haunted by the devil, as Isaiah 13:20,21. Brentius rendereth it, Hesternam pressuram et consternationem, yesterday’s pressures and fright; that is, saith he, The creditor’s eagerness to be satisfied, which frighteth these wretches, and putteth them to their work.