Job 24:11

11 They press oil within their walls and tread their winepresses and suffer thirst.

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.

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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 They pluck the fatherless from the breast and take a pledge of the poor.

10 They cause the naked to go without clothing, and they take away the sheaves from the hungry.

11 They press oil within their walls and tread their winepresses and suffer thirst.

12 Men groan from out of the city, and the souls of the dead cry out; yet God did not hinder them.

13 They are among those that rebel against the light; they have never known its ways nor abided in its paths.