Job 19:18

Yea, young children despised me; I arose, and they spake against me.

Ver. 18. Yea, young children despised me] Fools, saith the Vulgate, who are never more pleasant than when they play the buffoons at my expense. Ungodly men, some render it, as Job 16:11. Others, the baser sort of people. And surely none so base as they that deride virtue, especially because forsaken of fortune, as one phraseth it. What a bitter jeer was that of Tobiah, the servant, or slave, the Ammonite! Nehemiah 4:3. The basest can mock, as the abjects did David, Psalms 44:15,16, and the alestakes also, Psalms 69:12. But it is a happiness to do well, and yet hear ill. All God's people must be ready to pass through good report and evil report, 2 Corinthians 6:8. And every Job must reckon, that as the reproacher is homine peior, a more worse man, not so much as a man (saith Chrysostom); so the reproached, that bears it well, is Angelis par, equal to the angels.

I arose, and they spake against me] I arose, sc. to rebuke them, or to pacify them, or to pass away from them, and my back is no sooner turned, but they reviled me. Some render it, Sto coram illis, I stand before them; that is, they stay not till I am gone past, but reproach me to my face, such is their boldness and baseness. See Isaiah 3:5 .