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Job 30:2-4
2 Yea, whereto [mah] might the strength [koach] of their hands [yad] profit me, in whom old age [kelach] was perished ['abad]?
3 For want [checer] and famine [kaphan] they were solitary [galmuwd]; fleeing [`araq] into the wilderness [tsiyah] in former time ['emesh] desolate [show'] and waste [mashow'ah].
4 Who cut up [qataph] mallows [malluwach] by the bushes [siyach], and juniper [rethem] roots [sheresh] for their meat [lechem]. KJV-Interlinear
2 'Indeed, what good was the strength of their hands to me? Vigor had perished from them. 3 'From want and famine they are gaunt Who gnaw the dry ground by night in waste and desolation, 4 Who pluck mallow by the bushes, And whose food is the root of the broom shrub. NASB
Arrogance was the original sin of Lucifer, who is now known as Satan or the devil. From arrogance, all other sins are born into the life of the individual. Among them is stubbornness, the glue of arrogance, which keeps people confined within the boundaries, or prison, of sin.
On the opposite side of the coin, is humility. Humility is the unassuming or un-stubborn attitude of the individual, which allows the person to see other options and make other choices in life. Humility allows the individual to get out of the prison of arrogance.
There is a side of life where people will stick to their bad decisions no matter what. They do not have to be poor, or even wealthy for that matter. Arrogance and stubbornness translate into inflexibility in their opinions and that translates into the making of bad decisions in life. Usually decisions are made spontaneously, or in a knee jerk fashion, and when people have made their decision, their stubbornness makes up the prison bars that keep them in their circumstances, even when it is obvious that their situation is not a good one.
They won't think things through and they refuse to do the reasonable things to make their life better.
And so these are the individuals which Job is describing.
These are folks who choose to not work. They are poor because of their own refusal to, not work.
Instead of going to work and making something of their life, they choose to go into the desert, live in rags, and eat from bushes and roots.
The mallow referred to here is a large bush, which grows in regions that do not receive much water, if any. Their leaves and branches are extremely sour and would be considered by normal folks, something that would be eaten as a very, very, very last resort.
So, this description is of people who refuse to listen to reason. They prefer life in a desert setting, driven their, not by other folks, but driven by their own negative and rigid attitude. The desert has little water, if any. The desert has little opportunity to offer life, if any. No person in their right mind would prefer life in the desert over life in a more prosperous setting.
The prosperous setting requires work, responsibility and so forth. Something that the spiritually negative person refuses to do.
This is the perfect description of the spiritually negative person. No matter how benevolent Job has tried to be with those who were destitute, there were those who rejected his help. And, in fact, they hated Job because of his offers, and cheered when Job fell on hard times himself.
Spiritually negative people treat God, Christ, doctrine, and their spiritual life in the same fashion. They reject doctrine, they reject the principles of doctrine, they pick and choose the principles they will or will not abide by in life.
They presume wisdom, when they are void of knowledge. And they are stubborn, and trapped in their stubbornness by a prison of their own construction.
Their attitude, which they believe to be wisdom in their own mind, gets them poverty or a life in the spiritual desert of life. Their life is bitter and sour, because that is how they think. The food of their bitterness is of their own choosing.
And the very odd thing about all of this is, that their relief is only a thought or an attitude adjustment away. Change for the better cannot be much simpler. But stubbornness creates a huge barrier to change.
The vigor of life comes from making good decisions in life. Bible doctrine is the good decision, which produces vigor in the spiritual life. A more vigorous strength than the physical life can produce.
Throw away your vigor and you have no strength. Having no strength, you are no good to yourself, much less anyone else.
