Job 30:13 (KJV)

What does Job 30:13 mean?

Job 30:13 describes Job’s complaint that people are making his suffering worse. In his account, they do not merely watch his troubles; they actively add to them, and they need no one else to help them do so.

Job pictures his way through life as a path that others have damaged. After describing their advance against him in verse 12, he portrays them as people who can obstruct his way and increase his distress on their own.

The Hebrew behind Job 30:13

• “mar” — נָתַס (natas): The word carries the sense of breaking down or tearing apart. With “path,” it gives Job’s picture the force of deliberate destruction rather than a minor obstacle.

• “set forward” — יָעַל (yaʿal): The word can carry the sense of helping something along or making it succeed. Here it is Job’s “calamity,” or disaster, that his attackers help along.

Why Job 30:13 matters

• Job describes his attackers as acting without outside support. The phrase “they have no helper” makes their ability to trouble him especially striking.

• The verse is part of Job’s account of being publicly humiliated. In verse 9, he says that these people have made him the subject of their song and mockery; verse 13 shows that their hostility goes beyond words.

• Job’s picture of a ruined path fits the surrounding images of an attack. In verses 12 and 14, he describes people building ways to attack him and breaking through toward him, as though he were under siege.