Job 24:4-14

4 They push the needy out of the way -the poor of the land are forced into hiding;

5 like wild donkeys in the wilderness, they have to go out and scavenge food, [hoping that] the desert will provide food for their children.

6 They must reap in fields that are not their own and gather late grapes in the vineyards of the wicked.

7 They pass the night without clothing, naked, uncovered in the cold,

8 wet with mountain rain, and hugging the rock for lack of shelter.

9 "There are those who pluck orphans from the breast and [those who] take [the clothes of] the poor in pledge,

10 so that they go about stripped, unclothed; they go hungry, as they carry sheaves [of grain];

11 between these men's rows [of olives], they make oil; treading their winepresses, they suffer thirst.

12 Men are groaning in the city, the mortally wounded are crying for help, yet God finds nothing amiss!

13 "There are those who rebel against the light -they don't know its ways or stay in its paths.

14 The murderer rises with the light to kill the poor and needy; while at night he is like a thief.

Job 24:4-14 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO JOB 24

This chapter contains the second part of Job's answer to the last discourse of Eliphaz, in which he shows that wicked men, those of the worst characters, prosper in the world, and go through it with impunity; he lays down this as a certain truth, that though no time is hid from God, yet they that are most familiar with him, and know most of him, do not see, and cannot observe, any days of his for judging and punishing wicked men in, this life, Job 24:1; and instances in men guilty of injustice, violence, oppression, cruelty, and inhumanity, to their neighbours, and yet God lays not folly to them, or charges them with sin, and punishes them for it, Job 24:2-12; and in persons that commit the most atrocious crimes in secret, such as murderers, adulterers, and thieves, Job 24:13-17; he allows that there is a curse upon their portion, and that the grave shall consume them, and they shall be remembered no more, Job 24:18-20; and because of their ill treatment of others, though they may be in safety and prosperity, and be exalted for a while, they shall be brought low and cut off by death, but generally speaking are not punished in this life, Job 24:21-24; and concludes with the greatest assurance of being in the right, and having truth on his side, Job 24:25.