Job 24
Job’s do-nothing God
God’s calendar
1Why doesn’t God get a calendarAnd set aside some days to hold court?
Of all those who know him,
No one has a clue about his schedule. [1]
2While we’re waiting for him,
Thieves move our boundary markers [2]
And take our flocks to their pastures,
Keeping them as their own.
3They take an orphan’s donkey.
And they keep a widow’s ox
as collateral against what she owes.
4They run the poor off the road,
And frighten them into hiding.
Life as poor and exploited
5The poor live in the badlandsLike wild donkeys in the desert.
There they scavenge for food for their families.
6They harvest someone else’s fields [3]
And pick grapes for wicked landowners.
7They sleep without enough clothes to keep them warm.
They don't have covers for cold nights.
8Mountain rain soaks these homeless people.
Rocks are all the protection they have from the weather.
9Fatherless babies are snatched from their mothers
Because children become currency to cover a debt.
10The kids go around naked
Because they don't have clothes.
They work as grain field slaves,
But they still go hungry.
11The poor crush olives on the hillsides.
And they crush grapes in the wine presses.
Yet they’re hungry and thirsty.
12Dying people groan all over town.
Injured and sick folks cry for help.
But God’s not paying attention.
Wicked people wake at night
13There are crooked people here who hate the light.They want nothing to do with it.
They live their lives in darkness.
14When the sun goes down
Murderers wake up to kill the poor
And rob the needy.
15Married folks with an eye for adultery
Hang loose until twilight.
Then they hide their faces in the darkness
Thinking no one will catch them.
16At nighttime thieves break into homes.
But in the daylight they hide from everyone.
Thieves don't like the light.
17Darkness is their idea of daylight.
For they are the best buddies
Of terror in the night.
Scum of the water
18These people are the scum of the water,Living on cursed land,
Where no day workers are willing to go
To help harvest the vineyards.
19Drought and heat snatch the snowmelt.
The grave takes the wicked.
20The family forgets them.
Worms find them
And leaves them in pieces
Like a broken tree.
21They exploit infertile women.
They aren’t any better to widows.
22God’s strength overpowers the powerful.
They’re rich.
But there’s no guarantee they’ll stay that way.
23He lets then live safe and secure for a time.
But he keeps his eyes on them.
24They enjoy some fame and glory.
Then they’re gone.
They wither, shrivel, and disappear,
Like the flowering mallow plant.
25Now if I didn’t get this right,
Who can prove me wrong
And show that I don’t know what I’m talking about?
Footnotes
Job is likely talking about God’s timetable because he’s in a hurry to plead his innocence in the Supreme Court of God. He wants vindicated as “innocent,” and not deserving of the tragedies that wiped out his family, livestock, and slaves.
There are a lot of stones in the Middle East. People in Bible times and some folks today use stones to mark the boundaries of their land. Job begins a monologue about how innocent, poor folks suffer like he does. Many scholars say Job is making his main point in these debates: good people suffer, and it has nothing to do with their sin. God simply allows them to suffer or perhaps causes the suffering. Yet the point isn’t about God. It’s about the innocence of Job, some insist.
The Hebrew language is unclear in this verse. It’s impossible to tell if the poor people are stealing food at night, picking the leftover rotten grapes, working as day laborers, among other possibilities. Bible translations will pick any one of those. But perhaps the earlier reference to people moving land boundaries could indicate the rich stole their property. And now the disenfranchised had to harvest crops on what had been their land but now belongs to some rich thug who moved in on them.
Discussion Questions
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