Bible Strands
Job 30:29
I have become a brother of jackals, a companion of ostriches.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Job speaks to his own degraded condition while standing in public shame and physical decay. He makes this declaration immediately after crying for help in the assembly and before describing his peeling skin and burning bones.
The words — The Hebrew terms אָח ('ach) and רֵעַ (re'a) literally mean "brother" and "companion." The text uses these kinship words to declare his forced association with despised, unclean creatures.
The thread — This degraded kinship imagery appears in Micah 1:8, which commands howling like a jackal and mourning like an ostrich, and parallels Job 17:14, where he addresses corruption and worms as family.
Why it lands — The text states that suffering strips away social standing and ritual purity, reducing the speaker to the status of outcasts. It asks the reader to confront the literal reality of alienation without softening the description of degradation.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls.
Cross-references
- Micah 1:8 Because of this I will lament and wail; I will walk barefoot and naked. I will howl like a jackal and mourn like an ostrich.
- Psalms 102:6 I am like a desert owl, like an owl among the ruins.
- Job 17:14 and say to corruption, ‘You are my father,’ and to the worm, ‘My mother,’ or ‘My sister,’
- Psalms 44:19 But You have crushed us in the lair of jackals; You have covered us with deepest darkness.
- Malachi 1:3 but Esau I have hated, and I have made his mountains a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals.”
- Isaiah 13:21 But desert creatures will lie down there, and howling creatures will fill her houses. Ostriches will dwell there, and wild goats will leap about.
- Isaiah 38:14 I chirp like a swallow or crane; I moan like a dove. My eyes grow weak as I look upward. O Lord, I am oppressed; be my security.”