Job 24 WEB
Summary: Job shifts to describing broader social injustice in the world, asking why the Almighty does not set fixed times of judgment, since the wicked move boundary stones, steal livestock, and drive away the fatherless and the widow's ox, forcing the poor into hiding and gleaning in others' fields. He describes the desperate poor going about naked and hungry, carrying sheaves for others while starving themselves, and the oppressed groaning in the city, yet notes that God seemingly "layeth not folly to them" (v. 12), allowing murderers, adulterers, and thieves to operate under cover of darkness with apparent impunity. Job's point throughout is that the tidy moral order his friends insist on does not match the disordered reality of injustice he observes.
1“Why aren’t times laid up by the Almighty? Why don’t those who know him see his days?
2There are people who remove the landmarks. They violently take away flocks, and feed them.
3They drive away the donkey of the fatherless, and they take the widow’s ox for a pledge.
4They turn the needy out of the way. The poor of the earth all hide themselves.
5Behold, as wild donkeys in the desert, they go out to their work, seeking diligently for food. The wilderness yields them bread for their children.
6They cut their food in the field. They glean the vineyard of the wicked.
7They lie all night naked without clothing, and have no covering in the cold.
8They are wet with the showers of the mountains, and embrace the rock for lack of a shelter.
9There are those who pluck the fatherless from the breast, and take a pledge of the poor,
10So that they go around naked without clothing. Being hungry, they carry the sheaves.
11They make oil within the walls of these men. They tread wine presses, and suffer thirst.
12From out of the populous city, men groan. The soul of the wounded cries out, yet God doesn’t regard the folly.
13“These are of those who rebel against the light. They don’t know its ways, nor stay in its paths.
14The murderer rises with the light. He kills the poor and needy. In the night he is like a thief.
15The eye also of the adulterer waits for the twilight, saying, ‘No eye will see me.’ He disguises his face.
16In the dark they dig through houses. They shut themselves up in the daytime. They don’t know the light.
17For the morning is to all of them like thick darkness, for they know the terrors of the thick darkness.
18“They are foam on the surface of the waters. Their portion is cursed in the earth. They don’t turn into the way of the vineyards.
19Drought and heat consume the snow waters, so does Sheol those who have sinned.
20The womb will forget him. The worm will feed sweetly on him. He will be no more remembered. Unrighteousness will be broken as a tree.
21He devours the barren who don’t bear. He shows no kindness to the widow.
22Yet God preserves the mighty by his power. He rises up who has no assurance of life.
23God gives them security, and they rest in it. His eyes are on their ways.
24They are exalted; yet a little while, and they are gone. Yes, they are brought low, they are taken out of the way as all others, and are cut off as the tops of the ears of grain.
25If it isn’t so now, who will prove me a liar, and make my speech worth nothing?”
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