Job 24

Nothing about time is hidden from the Almighty. So why are times not stored up by him? And why do the people who know him never get to see the days when he acts?

1Why, seeing times are not hidden from the Almighty, do they that know him not see his days?

NoteJob is still speaking, answering his friends' claim that God punishes the wicked promptly and visibly. The picture behind the verse is a judge holding court on fixed days: Job asks why God does not keep a calendar of sessions, so that people loyal to him could watch the cases being heard. "The Almighty" translates the Hebrew title *Shaddai*, an old name for God used throughout the book.

2Some men move the boundary stones that mark off land. They take flocks by force and then graze them as their own.

2Some remove the landmarks; they violently take away flocks, and feed thereof.

NoteBoundaries between fields were marked by stones set in the ground; there were no fences or written surveys. Land was normally inherited and stayed in a family for generations, so quietly shifting a stone a few feet at night stole land permanently and was almost impossible to prove. Moving boundary stones was a standing example of theft that the law could not catch.

3They drive away the donkey that belongs to a child with no father. They take a widow's ox to hold as security for a debt.

3They drive away the ass of the fatherless, they take the widow’s ox for a pledge.

NoteTaking something "as security" (the King James word is a "pledge") means a lender kept one of the borrower's possessions until the debt was paid. A donkey or an ox was the animal a household plowed and hauled with; seizing it took away the very means of earning the money to repay. Fatherless children and widows had no adult male to press their case, which is why they appear together here as the easiest people to rob.

4They push needy people off the road. All the poor of the land have to hide themselves away together.

4They turn the needy out of the way: the poor of the earth hide themselves together.

5Look: like wild donkeys in the desert, the poor go out to their work, searching early for something to eat. The dry wasteland has to feed them and their children.

5Behold, as wild asses in the desert, go they forth to their work; rising betimes for a prey: the wilderness yieldeth food for them and for their children.

6Each one gathers fodder in the field, and they pick the leftover grapes in the vineyard of the wicked.

6They reap every one his corn in the field: and they gather the vintage of the wicked.

NotePoor people were allowed to go over a harvested field or vineyard afterwards and collect what the pickers had left: this is called gleaning. The verse pictures them scraping a living from other people's land, including the land of the very men who are mistreating them. "Corn" in the King James Version means grain of any kind, usually barley or wheat; it never means maize.

7Because of these men, the poor spend the night naked, with no clothing and nothing to cover them in the cold.

7They cause the naked to lodge without clothing, that they have no covering in the cold.

Note"Naked" in this kind of Hebrew usually means stripped of the outer cloak rather than wearing nothing at all. The cloak was a person's blanket as well as their coat, so a poor man who lost his had nothing to sleep under. Israelite law later forbade keeping a man's cloak overnight as security for a debt for exactly this reason.

8The rains of the mountains soak them, and they press themselves against the rock because they have no shelter.

8They are wet with the showers of the mountains, and embrace the rock for want of a shelter.

9They tear the fatherless child away from its mother's breast, and they take what the poor have as security for a debt.

9They pluck the fatherless from the breast, and take a pledge of the poor.

NoteA creditor could seize a member of a debtor's family and hold them, effectively as a laborer, until the debt was cleared. Taking a nursing infant is the extreme version of that practice, and Job names it as something that actually happens and goes unpunished.

10So the poor go about naked, with no clothing. They carry in the cut grain, and they are still hungry.

10They cause him to go naked without clothing, and they take away the sheaf from the hungry;

11They crush olives for oil inside the walls of these men. They tread the grapes in the winepresses, and they are still thirsty.

11Which make oil within their walls, and tread their winepresses, and suffer thirst.

NoteOlives were crushed in stone presses and grapes were trodden barefoot in shallow vats to squeeze out the juice. The bitter point is that these laborers handle oil and new wine all day, on their employer's premises, and are given none of it.

12From inside the city men groan, and the wounded cry out for help. Yet God does not charge anyone with doing wrong.

12Men groan from out of the city, and the soul of the wounded crieth out: yet God layeth not folly to them.

NoteThe scene shifts from the countryside to the town. The last line is uncertain in Hebrew: the wording can mean that God brings no charge against the men doing this, or, with a very similar-looking word: that God pays no attention to the victims' prayer. Either way Job's complaint is that heaven does not respond.

13These are among those who rebel against the light. They do not know its ways, and they do not stay on its paths.

13They are of those that rebel against the light; they know not the ways thereof, nor abide in the paths thereof.

Note"Light" here means daylight, and the men described in the next few verses are criminals who need darkness to work. The word also carries the sense of what is open and above board, so "rebelling against the light" is both a description of night work and a description of a way of living.

14At the light the murderer gets up and kills the poor and the needy. At night he acts like a thief.

14The murderer rising with the light killeth the poor and needy, and in the night is as a thief.

NoteThe Hebrew can mean the murderer rises at first light or that he rises when the light goes; translators differ. Both readings fit the picture of a man whose working hours are the edges of the day, when there are few witnesses.

15The eye of the man who sleeps with another man's wife watches for the dusk. He thinks, "No eye will see me," and he keeps his face covered.

15The eye also of the adulterer waiteth for the twilight, saying, No eye shall see me: and disguiseth his face.

16In the dark they break into houses that they marked out for themselves during the day. They do not know the light.

16In the dark they dig through houses, which they had marked for themselves in the daytime: they know not the light.

NoteHouse walls were commonly built of sun-dried mud brick, so a thief did not pick a lock: he dug a hole straight through the wall and climbed in. The daytime work of "marking out" a house means scouting which ones to break into after dark.

17For all of them, morning is like deep darkness. They are at home with the terrors of deep darkness.

17For the morning is to them even as the shadow of death: if one know them, they are in the terrors of the shadow of death.

NoteThe King James "shadow of death" translates a Hebrew word for the thickest kind of darkness. The line reverses the normal order of things: for these men the black of night is what ordinary people's morning is, the time they get up and go about their business.

18Such a man is swept away quickly, like something carried off on the water. The piece of land he owns is under a curse, so no one turns down the road to his vineyards.

18He is swift as the waters; their portion is cursed in the earth: he beholdeth not the way of the vineyards.

NoteFrom here to verse 24 the passage is one of the hardest in the book, and its speaker is disputed. The sentiments sound like the friends' doctrine that the wicked are swiftly destroyed, which is the opposite of what Job has just been arguing; readers have variously taken these lines as Job quoting his opponents in order to mock them, as a curse he is pronouncing, or as text that has been disturbed in transmission. The translation keeps the lines as they stand rather than deciding the question.

19Dry weather and heat melt away the snow and take the water. In the same way, the grave takes those who have sinned.

19Drought and heat consume the snow waters: so doth the grave those which have sinned.

Note"The grave" translates *Sheol*, the Hebrew name for the place of the dead below the earth. It is where everyone was thought to go, good and bad alike, not a place of punishment. The image is of meltwater vanishing in the sun: the ground swallows it and it is simply gone.

20The womb that carried him forgets him. The worm feeds on him and finds him sweet. No one remembers him anymore. Wickedness is snapped like a tree.

20The womb shall forget him; the worm shall feed sweetly on him; he shall be no more remembered; and wickedness shall be broken as a tree.

21He mistreats the woman who is childless and has never given birth, and he does no good for the widow.

21He evil entreateth the barren that beareth not: and doeth not good to the widow.

NoteA woman with no children and a widow had no one to support them or to speak for them in a dispute, which is why the two are paired. Preying on them is shorthand for attacking the people least able to hit back.

22Yet by his power he drags away even the strong. He rises up, and no one can count on staying alive.

22He draweth also the mighty with his power: he riseth up, and no man is sure of life.

NoteThe Hebrew does not say who "he" is, and the verse can be read either way: God dragging off the powerful, or the ruthless man dragging off anyone he pleases. The next verse has the same problem, and translations divide.

23He may be given a sense of safety to rest on, but God's eyes are on everything such men do.

23Though it be given him to be in safety, whereon he resteth; yet his eyes are upon their ways.

24They are lifted high for a short time, and then they are gone. They are brought down and gathered up like everyone else, cut off like the heads of grain.

24They are exalted for a little while, but are gone and brought low; they are taken out of the way as all other, and cut off as the tops of the ears of corn.

NoteThe last image is from harvest: standing grain is cut through in one stroke near the top, so the heads all fall at once. It says nothing about how long the stalk stood beforehand, only how fast the end comes.

25If this is not true, then who will prove me a liar and show that my words are worth nothing?

25And if it be not so now, who will make me a liar, and make my speech nothing worth?

NoteJob closes the way a speaker in a legal argument does, daring anyone present to step forward and disprove what he has said. It is a challenge to his three friends, not a question he expects an answer to.