Job 24:11

11 No matter how back-breaking their labor, they can never make ends meet.

Job 24:11 Meaning and Commentary

Job 24:11

[Which] make oil within their walls
Not the poor within their own walls; as if the sense was, that they made their oil in a private manner within the walls of their houses, or in their cellars, lest it should be known and taken away from them; for such cannot be thought to have had oliveyards to make oil of; rather within the walls of their rich masters, where they were kept closely confined to their work, as if in a prison; or within the walls and fences of their oliveyards, where their olive presses stood; or best of all "within the rows F17 [of] their [olive trees]", as the word signifies, where having gathered the olives, they pressed out the oil in the presses and this they did at noon, in the heat of the day, as the word F18 for making oil is observed by some to signify, and yet had nothing given them to quench their thirst, as follows:

[and] tread [their] winepresses, and suffer thirst;
after having gathered their grapes from their vines for them, they trod them in the winepresses, and made their wine, and yet would not allow them to drink of it to allay their thirst.


FOOTNOTES:

F17 (Mtrwv Nyb) "inter ordines", Mercerus, Piscator, Cocceius; so Sephorno, and some in Eliae Tishbi, p. 241.
F18 (wryhuy) "meridiati sunt", V. L. so Bolducius, Schultens.

Job 24:11 In-Context

9 Nursing mothers have their babies snatched from them; the infants of the poor are kidnapped and sold.
10 They go about patched and threadbare; even the hard workers go hungry.
11 No matter how back-breaking their labor, they can never make ends meet.
12 People are dying right and left, groaning in torment. The wretched cry out for help and God does nothing, acts like nothing's wrong!
13 "Then there are those who avoid light at all costs, who scorn the light-filled path.
Published by permission. Originally published by NavPress in English as THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright 2002 by Eugene Peterson. All rights reserved.