24
📚“Since times are not hidden from the Almighty, why do those who know him never see his days? 24:1 Job wonders why God does not set specific times to right the wrongs that exist on earth, times to clear the righteous and punish the wicked.⚜
2 📚Some men remove boundary stones. They take away flocks by violence and devour them.
3 📚They drive away the donkey of the fatherless; they take the widow’s ox as a pledge.
4 📚They push the needy off the road; the poor of the earth hide themselves from them.
24:2-4 He begins now a description of the behavior that should be judged.⚜
5 📚Look, they go out to their work like the wild donkeys of the desert, seeking carefully for food. The wilderness provides food for them and for their children.
6 📚They gather their fodder in the field, and glean in the vineyard of the wicked.
7 📚They spend the night naked, without clothing; they have no covering in the cold.
8 📚They are wet with mountain showers, and hug the rocks for lack of shelter.
9 📚The fatherless are snatched from the breast; the property of the poor is taken as a pledge.
10 📚Lacking clothing, they must go about naked; and the sheaves are taken away from the hungry.
11 📚They press out oil inside their walls, and tread the winepresses, yet suffer thirst.
12 📚Men groan in the city, and the soul of the wounded cries out. Yet God does not charge the wicked with wrongdoing.
24:5-12 The destitute are crushed beneath the iron heel of the wicked. Yet God, Job thinks, does nothing about it (v 12). He has set no times to bring the wicked into court. He lets them go on in their violence and oppression. He lets the innocent poor suffer and groan. These are facts which his friends can hardly deny. But they seem to close their eyes to them because they are contrary to their idea of divine retribution. (If our ideas have to ignore the facts, is it not time to change our ideas?) Job, on the other hand, cries out “Where is justice? We search for it in vain in this world”. He does not realize that justice would be handed out in the next world, after death.⚜
13 📚“They are the ones who rebel against the light; they do not know its ways, or remain in its paths.
14 📚The murderer rises before the light and kills the poor and needy; at night he is like a thief.
15 📚The eye of the adulterer also waits for the twilight, saying, ‘No eye will see me’, and he disguises his face.
16 📚In the dark they dig into houses, which they had marked out for themselves in daylight. They do not know the light.
17 📚For the morning is to them like the shadow of death; if they are recognized the terrors of the shadow of death seize them.
18 📚“They are swift on the surface of the waters. Their portion on the earth is cursed; they do not face the way of the vineyards.
19 📚As drought and heat consume snow water, the grave 📖 consumes the one who has sinned.
20 📚The womb will forget him. The worm will feed sweetly on him. He will no longer be remembered, and wickedness will be broken off like a tree.
21 📚He mistreats the barren, childless woman, and will not do good to the widow.
24:18-21 Job admits that eventually the wicked will perish. He does not deny that at times divine retribution is at work in the world.⚜
22 📚But God drags away the mighty by his power. When he arises, no one can be sure of life.
23 📚If they are given security, they rely on it; yet his eyes are on their ways.
24 📚They are exalted for a little while, then are gone; they are brought low and taken out of the way like all others, cut off like heads of grain.
24:22-24 But often, Job says, God actually seems to be protecting evil men from disaster. And when they die it is in the natural course of things just as with everyone else. Like plants that develop fully ripened grain they have a full span of life before being cut off.⚜
25 📚“Now if this is not so, who will make me out to be a liar, and show that my speech is worthless?”
24:25 Job says that these are the facts. His meaning in all this, of course, is that his friends are very wrong to teach that the wicked are always punished in this life and the righteous always rewarded.⚜