Job 24:1, Judgement delayed
"Why does the Almighty not set times for judgment?
Why must those who know him look in vain for such days?
This is the theme of the chapter. Why is God silent and justice delayed?
Job 24:2-4, Moving boundary stones
Men move boundary stones;
they pasture flocks they have stolen.
They drive away the orphan's donkey
and take the widow's ox in pledge.
They thrust the needy from the path
and force all the poor of the land into hiding.
In the ancient Near East, boundary stones were the only way to identifies one's property and so were considered sacred. (See Deuteronomy 19:14, 27:17 for a explicit prohibitions against moving these stones.) But Job knows that men deceitfully grab territory by shifting these sacred markers. They greedily take away flocks, the orphan's donkey, the widow's ox, at every step they steal the livelihood of the poor.
Job 24:5-8, Naked in the rain
Like wild donkeys in the desert,
the poor go about their labor of foraging food;
the wasteland provides food for their children.
They gather fodder in the fields
and glean in the vineyards of the wicked.
Lacking clothes, they spend the night naked;
they have nothing to cover themselves in the cold.
They are drenched by mountain rains
and hug the rocks for lack of shelter.
The poor are vividly described. They look for food and cannot find it, gleaning in the vineyards of the wicked who have already removed everything. The poor spend the night naked and cold, hunting in the mountains for shelter.
The Mosaic Law listed a number of protections for the poor. They were to be allowed to glean in the fields (Deuteronomy 24:21) Even in debt, they were to be allowed to keep property needed for work. If one took a cloak as a guarantee, it was to be returned at night.
Job 24:9-12, Groans of the dying
The fatherless child is snatched from the breast;
the infant of the poor is seized for a debt.
Lacking clothes, they go about naked;
they carry the sheaves, but still go hungry.
They crush olives among the terraces;
they tread the winepresses, yet suffer thirst.
The groans of the dying rise from the city,
and the souls of the wounded cry out for help.
But God charges no one with wrongdoing.
The valuables of the ancient Near East included grain, olives and wine. Here Job accuses the oppressor of making the poor carry sheaves of grain, crush olives, tread winepresses, yet denying the poor the results of their work, bread, olive oil, wine. In all of this oppression, the groans of the dying poor rise from the city. But God appears to do nothing. (Compare Job's words with the New Testament passage James 5:1-6.)
Job 24:13-17, Rebelling against the light
"There are those who rebel against the light,
who do not know its ways or stay in its paths.
When daylight is gone, the murderer rises up and kills the poor and needy;
in the night he steals forth like a thief.
The eye of the adulterer watches for dusk;
he thinks, `No eye will see me,' and he keeps his face concealed.
In the dark, men break into houses,
but by day they shut themselves in;
they want nothing to do with the light.
For all of them, deep darkness is their morning;
they make friends with the terrors of darkness.
The wicked take advantage of the dark, sneaking in the shadows to kill, steal, commit adultery. (In a time before electricity, when lamplight was coveted, the night could be really, really dark!)
Job 24:18-21, Foam on the water
"Yet they are foam on the surface of the water;
their portion of the land is cursed,
so that no one goes to the vineyards.
As heat and drought snatch away the melted snow,
so the grave snatches away those who have sinned.
The womb forgets them,
the worm feasts on them;
evil men are no longer remembered
but are broken like a tree.
They prey on the barren and childless woman,
and to the widow show no kindness.
Hartley says that the last verses (18 to 25) of chapter 24 are difficult to translate. The text is difficult, either due to copy errors or archaic words and this passage, as translated, differs from the earlier part of Job's speech. Prior to verse 18, Job's complaint is that the wicked appear to commit evil without punishment or retribution. Yet here the speech seems to agree with Job's friends that, yes, eventually evil men perish, foam on the water, land that is curse, disappearing like melting snow, into the grave.
There are apparently significant problems with the text of chapters 24 to 27 of Job. This is visible in the extremely short speech of Bildad in the next chapter and in passages whose content appears to contradict the claims of the speaker. Neither Old Testament Hebrew nor New Testament Greek have grammatical markers and so it can be difficult to know when one speech ends and another begins. (We will see this issue rise again in the Song of Solomon; in the New Testament it appears in John 3.)
Some commentators argue that the text of Job 24:18-25 is really a speech of one of his friends, Bildad or Zophar. Hartley, after mentioning thoughts of other scholars, suggests that these words are indeed the words of Job, that Job agrees that eventually the wicked suffer but laments that this takes too long to slow down their oppression of others. Elmer B. Smick, writing the commentary in The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Volume 4, agrees with Hartley. But the questions about the text will get harder as we go into chapters 25 to 27.
Job 24:22-24, A feeling of security
But God drags away the mighty by his power;
though they become established, they have no assurance of life.
He may let them rest in a feeling of security,
but his eyes are on their ways.
For a little while they are exalted,
and then they are gone;
they are brought low and gathered up like all others;
they are cut off like heads of grain.
God does intervene against the mighty -- but allows them to feel secure for a tie.
Job 24:25, This is so
"If this is not so,
who can prove me false
and reduce my words to nothing?"
Job ends his speech with a challenge, claiming he cannot be refuted.
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