Job 24:2

2 Wicked people take other people's land; they steal flocks and take them to new pastures.

Job 24:2 Meaning and Commentary

Job 24:2

[Some] remove the landmarks
Anciently set to distinguish one man's land from another, to secure property, and preserve from encroachments; but some were so wicked as either secretly in the night to remove them, or openly to do it, having power on their side, pretending they were wrongly located; this was not only prohibited by the law of God, and pronounced an accursed thing, ( Deuteronomy 19:14 ) ( 27:17 ) ; but was reckoned so before the law was given, being known to be such by the light of nature, as what was now, and here condemned, was before that law was in being; and so we find that this was accounted an execrable thing among the Heathens, who had a deity they called Jupiter Terminalis, who was appointed over bounds and landmarks; so Numa Pompilius appointed stones to be set as bounds to everyone's lands, and dedicated them to Jupiter Terminalis, and ordered that those that removed them should be slain as sacrilegious persons, and they and their oxen devoted to destruction F6: some render it, "they touch the landmarks" F7, as if to touch them was unlawful, and therefore much more to remove them:

they violently take away flocks, and feed [thereof];
not content with a sheep or a lamb, they took away whole flocks, and that by force and violence, openly and publicly, and slew them, and fed on them; or else took them and put them into their own grounds, or such as they had got by encroachments from others, where they fed them without any fear of men; which shows the effrontery and impudence of them.


FOOTNOTES:

F6 Dion. Halicarnass. & Festus apud Sanctium in loc. Vid. Rycquium de Capitol. Roman. c. 14. Ovid. Fasti, l. 2.
F7 (wgyvy) "attigerunt", Pagninus, Bolducius; "attingunt", Vatablus.

Job 24:2 In-Context

1 "I wish the Almighty would set a time for judging. Those who know God do not see such a day.
2 Wicked people take other people's land; they steal flocks and take them to new pastures.
3 They chase away the orphan's donkey and take the widow's ox when she has no money.
4 They push needy people off the path; all the poor of the land hide from them.
5 The poor become like wild donkeys in the desert who go about their job of finding food. The desert gives them food for their children.
Scripture taken from the New Century Version. Copyright © 1987, 1988, 1991 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.