Bible Strands
Job 30:3
Gaunt from poverty and hunger, they gnawed the dry land, and the desolate wasteland by night.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Job speaks to himself and the surrounding community while detailing the plight of the oppressed in his extended lament. The moment occurs mid-monologue, immediately after noting the collapse of the weak and before describing their foraging for mallow and broom roots.
The words — The Hebrew כָפָן (kha.Fan) denotes acute hunger, paired with חֶסֶר (Che.ser) for poverty to depict physical depletion. The term עֹרְקִים ('o.re.Kim) literally means gnawers, emphasizing the desperate consumption of barren ground.
The thread — This imagery of foraging in desolation echoes Job 24:5 and aligns with the marginalized wanderers described in Hebrews 11:38. The motif of the poor consuming the wasteland recurs in the supplied texts as a marker of extreme deprivation.
Why it lands — The text demands recognition of how systemic poverty reduces human beings to scavenging for survival. It requires the reader to confront the physical reality of destitution without spiritualizing the suffering.
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
For want and famine they were solitary; fleeing into the wilderness in former time desolate and waste.
Cross-references
- Job 24:5 Indeed, like wild donkeys in the desert, the poor go to work foraging for food; the wasteland is food for their children.
- Job 24:13 Then there are those who rebel against the light, not knowing its ways or staying on its paths.
- Hebrews 11:38 The world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and hid in caves and holes in the ground.