When God Looses the Bowstring Text: Job 30:9-15
Introduction: The Scorn of a Broken World
We come now to a raw place in the heart of Job. In the previous chapter, he recounted the glory days, when the candle of God shined upon his head and the friendship of God was in his tent. He was a man honored, respected, and blessed. But now, in chapter thirty, the hinge turns. The word is "But now..." and everything is upside down. Job's complaint here is not simply about his boils, or his lost fortune, or his dead children, though those are the terrible backdrop. His immediate anguish in this passage is the utter humiliation he suffers at the hands of men, the dregs of society, who now feel at liberty to mock and abuse him.
We must understand that suffering is never a simple, private affair between a man and his God. It is always a public spectacle. The world is watching. And the world, particularly the graceless world, loves to see a great man fall. They love to kick a man when he is down, because it makes them feel tall. This is the nature of envy and resentment, which is the native language of a fallen world. When a righteous man is afflicted, it gives the ungodly a grand opportunity to justify their own rebellion. "See," they say, "his God has abandoned him. His righteousness was a sham. He is just like us after all."
Job's experience is a sharp-edged lesson in the vanity of human respect. The same crowds that will lay palm branches before you one day will be screaming for your crucifixion the next. Honor from men is as fleeting as a morning mist. If your identity, your stability, your sense of well-being is tied to the applause and esteem of others, you are building your house on the sand. And when the storm comes, as it came for Job, the collapse will be total. Job is learning, in the most excruciating way possible, that the only audience that matters is the audience of One. But in this moment, it feels as though that audience has become his chief antagonist.
This passage forces us to confront a hard reality. Job's suffering is not random. It is not meaningless. And the men who mock him are not acting as free agents outside of God's control. Job rightly perceives a connection between God's action and their contempt. This is a profound theological point that our modern, sentimental age cannot stomach. We want a God who is in charge of the good things, while the bad things are somehow rogue events. But the Bible will not let us have such a neutered deity. Job's suffering, and the scorn that accompanies it, is a preview of the ultimate suffering and scorn that would be heaped upon the Lord Jesus Christ. And it is in Him that we find the only true answer to the anguish on display here.
The Text
"And now I have become their mocking song; I have even become a taunting word to them. They abhor me and keep a distance from me, And they do not hold back from spitting at my face. Because He has loosed His bowstring and afflicted me, They have thrust aside their bridle before me. On the right hand their brood arises; They thrust aside my feet and build up against me their ways to disaster. They break up my path; They profit from my destruction; They have no helper. As through a wide breach they come, Amid the storm they roll on. Terrors are turned against me; They pursue my nobility as the wind, And my hope for salvation has passed away like a cloud."
(Job 30:9-15 LSB)
The Song of the Scornful (vv. 9-10)
Job begins by describing his new social status.
"And now I have become their mocking song; I have even become a taunting word to them. They abhor me and keep a distance from me, And they do not hold back from spitting at my face." (Job 30:9-10)
The man who once sat in the gate as a respected judge is now the punchline of barroom jokes. His name has become a byword, a "taunting word." When someone wanted to curse another, they might say, "May you become like Job." This is the depth of his fall. He is no longer a person to these men; he is a caricature, a symbol of ruin to be jeered at. This is what the world does. It dehumanizes its victims before it destroys them.
They "abhor" him. This is a visceral, gut-level hatred. And their contempt is so great they will not even restrain themselves from spitting in his face. In the ancient world, this was an act of ultimate contempt and defilement. It was a physical expression of utter rejection. We should not read this verse without seeing a foreshadowing of the Messiah. Isaiah prophesied of the suffering servant, "I gave my back to those who strike, and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard; I hid not my face from disgrace and spitting" (Isaiah 50:6). When the Roman soldiers mocked Jesus, they "spat in His face and struck Him with their fists" (Matthew 26:67). Job is walking a path that the Son of God would later walk, for us.
This is the hatred of the seed of the serpent for the seed of the woman. It is irrational, venomous, and deeply personal. When a man of God is afflicted, it emboldens the wicked. They see it as a vindication of their own godlessness. They keep their distance, not out of fear of contagion, but out of a self-righteous disgust. They treat him as though he were ritually and morally unclean, which in their minds, his suffering has proven him to be.
The Divine Cause and Human Effect (v. 11)
Job now connects his human tormentors to the hand of God. This is crucial.
"Because He has loosed His bowstring and afflicted me, They have thrust aside their bridle before me." (Job 30:11 LSB)
Job does not attribute the actions of these men to mere chance or autonomous human wickedness. He sees a direct causal link. "Because He," meaning God, "has loosed His bowstring and afflicted me," therefore, "they have thrust aside their bridle." The image of God loosing His bowstring is that of an archer disarming himself, or perhaps more likely, unstringing the bow of Job's own strength and dignity. God has undone him, humbled him, afflicted him. Job's hedge of protection has been removed.
And what is the result? The wicked, seeing that God's hand is against Job, feel completely unrestrained. They "thrust aside their bridle." All the social conventions, all the respect for authority, all the fear that once kept their contempt in check is now gone. They are like horses that have thrown off their restraints and are running wild. They see Job as fair game precisely because they perceive that God has made him fair game.
This is a terrifying doctrine, but it is a biblical one. God is sovereign over the sins of men. He does not approve of them, He does not tempt men to sin, but He does, in His mysterious providence, use them for His own purposes. He can remove restraints, both internal and external, and allow wickedness to manifest itself. Think of how God hardened Pharaoh's heart. Think of how the Assyrians were the rod of God's anger against Israel, even though they acted out of their own pride and cruelty (Isaiah 10). Job understands this. He knows that these men are not acting independently of God's decree. This doesn't excuse their sin, not for a moment. They are fully culpable. But it does place their sin within the larger framework of God's sovereign purpose, a purpose that Job cannot yet see.
The Assault of the Brood (vv. 12-14)
The attack becomes organized and strategic. It is a military-style siege against a defenseless man.
"On the right hand their brood arises; They thrust aside my feet and build up against me their ways to disaster. They break up my path; They profit from my destruction; They have no helper. As through a wide breach they come, Amid the storm they roll on." (Job 30:12-14 LSB)
The "brood" arises on his right hand, which was the position of the accuser in a court of law (cf. Psalm 109:6). They are not just mocking him; they are prosecuting him, accusing him. They "thrust aside my feet," tripping him up, causing him to stumble. They "build up against me their ways to disaster." This is the language of siege warfare. They are building ramps and earthworks to assail his life. Every escape route is cut off. They "break up my path," making it impossible for him to move forward or find relief.
And notice their motive: "They profit from my destruction." There is a malicious joy, a satanic glee, in tearing down a righteous man. It advances their own cause. When the standard of righteousness is toppled, the wicked feel more comfortable in their sin. There is no one to restrain them, no one whose very presence is a rebuke to them. Job's friends thought he was being punished for some secret sin. These men don't care if he sinned or not; they simply rejoice in his ruin.
They come "as through a wide breach." The walls of his life have been broken down, and the enemy pours in, unopposed. They roll in "amid the storm," a tempest of accusation and violence. And in the middle of it all, Job cries out the loneliest words in this section: "They have no helper." This can be read two ways. It could mean that the attackers need no help in destroying him, so easy a target has he become. Or it could mean that Job has no helper, no one to stand with him, no advocate. Both are true. He is utterly alone, overwhelmed by a flood of contempt.
The Inner Collapse (v. 15)
The external assault now leads to a complete internal collapse of Job's spirit.
"Terrors are turned against me; They pursue my nobility as the wind, And my hope for salvation has passed away like a cloud." (Job 30:15 LSB)
The battle moves from the courtyard to the heart. "Terrors are turned against me." This is not just the fear of what men can do, but a deep, spiritual dread. It feels as though God Himself has become his terror. His "nobility," his honor, his dignity, the very essence of his public standing, is chased away like the wind. It is here one moment and gone the next, leaving nothing behind.
And his hope for "salvation", which here means deliverance, vindication, rescue from his plight, has vanished like a cloud. A cloud can look substantial, promising rain and relief, but the sun comes out and it is simply gone. This is the cry of a man at the end of his rope. The external props are gone, the internal fortitude is gone, and his hope in deliverance is gone. All he has left is God, and God appears to be the one orchestrating the entire disaster. This is the heart of his trial. It is one thing to suffer at the hands of men. It is another thing entirely to believe that God is the one directing their blows.
The Man of Sorrows
As we read this, we must not simply pity Job. We must see Christ in Job. The book of Job is not ultimately about solving the abstract problem of evil. It is about preparing us for the arrival of the one who would suffer perfectly and for a perfect cause. Every insult Job endured, Christ endured infinitely more. Every false accusation, every act of scorn, the spittle on the face, the abandonment by friends, the sense of being forsaken by God, all of it finds its ultimate expression at the cross.
Job became a mocking song for the wicked. But of Jesus, the soldiers, the priests, and the criminals all mocked Him, saying, "He saved others; let him save himself, if he is the Christ of God, his Chosen One!" (Luke 23:35). Job felt that God had loosed His bowstring against him. On the cross, Jesus was not just afflicted by God; He was crushed by God. He bore the full, undiluted wrath of God against our sin. "It was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put him to grief" (Isaiah 53:10).
Job's hope passed away like a cloud. Jesus cried out from a darkness deeper than any Job ever knew, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46). Job suffered as a righteous man caught in the cosmic conflict between God and Satan. Jesus suffered as the perfectly righteous Son of God, becoming a curse for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21).
And this is where our hope is found. If you are a believer going through the fire of affliction and scorn, you must know that your Savior has gone there before you. He understands. He is not a distant, stoic deity. He is the Man of Sorrows, acquainted with grief. Your suffering is not meaningless. It is being used by God to conform you to the image of His Son. The world may mock you, but you have a helper. You have an advocate. You have a High Priest who is able to sympathize with your weaknesses.
Job's story ends with restoration, but that is not the ultimate point. The ultimate point is resurrection. Because Jesus endured the ultimate scorn and the ultimate affliction, He was raised to the ultimate glory. And because we are in Him, our story does not end in the ash heap of mockery and despair. Our nobility may be pursued as the wind, and our earthly hopes may pass like a cloud. But our life is hidden with Christ in God. And when Christ, who is our life, appears, then we also will appear with Him in glory (Colossians 3:3-4). That is a hope that does not pass away. That is a nobility that cannot be touched. That is a salvation that is as solid as the empty tomb.