Job 30:1
But now they that are younger than I have me in derision, whose fathers I would have disdained to have set with the dogs of my flock. But now they that are younger than I have me in derision, whose fathers I would have disdained to have set with the dogs of my flock.
Job stands within the oldest poetical book that has come down. It belongs to the debate between Job and his three friends on the subject of his afflictions, covering chapters 4 to 31 in three circles of speeches by each of them. It stands at the close of the discussion between Job and his three friends, where they condemned him for seeming self-righteousness and he rejected their words because he felt they condemned him unjustly. It stands in the closing portion of the book, chapters 28 to 42, where Job is still defending himself because he knows he has committed no open sins against God and is earnest and anxious for God to manifest Himself to him.
The verse means that younger men mocked Job, whose fathers he had considered so low that he would not have placed them with the dogs guarding his flock. The mocking came after Job lost his wealth and was afflicted, and it contrasts the respect he received in prosperity with the contempt he faced in suffering. The mocking shows how far Job's fortunes and honor had fallen, and this scorn through loss and disgrace was part of the trial that tested his loyalty and integrity.
Applied to death, the verse shows the scorn a living body feels for base creatures and measures the humiliation death brings, so that the state of being dead is nothing to be coveted. The wonderfully made body, holding rank inherited for 6,000 years since Adam, is dishonored and defiled in death, stripped of rank by the tyrant Death, and slowly resolves into earth, becoming the sport of worms and low creatures it would have disdained in life as unfit even to run with flock dogs. If organized matter has animal consciousness, that consciousness suffers keen disgrace and shame in being dead.