With kings and counsellors of the earth, which built desolate places for themselves;
With kings ... which built desolate places for themselves - who built up for themselves what proved to be (not palaces, but) ruins! The wounded spirit of Job, once a great emir himself, sick of the vain struggles of mortal great men after grandeur, contemplates the palaces of kings, now desolate heaps of ruins. His regarding the repose of death the most desirable end of the great ones of the earth, wearied with heaping up perishable treasures, marks the irony that breaks out from the black clouds of melancholy (Umbreit). The "for themselves" marks their selfishness. Hirzel explains it of mausoleums, such so are found still, of stupendous proportions, in the ruins of Petra of Idumea. Ewald thinks the pyramids are meant. Affliction shows a man the real emptiness of worldly greatness.