"3. Barren with want and hunger, who gnawed in the wilderness, disfigured with calamity and misery.
4. And they ate grass, and barks of trees, and the root of junipers was their food.
"5. Who snatched up these things out of the valleys, and when they had found any of them, they ran to them with a cry.
"6. They dwelt in the desert places of torrents, and in caves of the earth, or UPON THE GRAVEL."
Is not all this wonderful?
In the King James version, verse 3 reads:
3. For want and famine they were solitary, fleeing into the wilderness, in former time, desolate and waste."
The commentators say that the words, "in former time, desolate and waste," mean literally, "the yesternight of desolation and waste."
Job is describing the condition of the people immediately following the catastrophe, not in some remote past.
And again Job says (Douay version, chap. xxx):