Job 24:1 ←
“Why aren’t times laid up by the Almighty? Why don’t those who know him see his days?
Job 24:2 ←
There are people who remove the landmarks. They violently take away flocks, and feed them.
Job 24:3 ←
They drive away the donkey of the fatherless, and they take the widow’s ox for a pledge.
Job 24:4 ←
They turn the needy out of the way. The poor of the earth all hide themselves.
Job 24:5 ←
Behold, as wild donkeys in the desert, they go out to their work, seeking diligently for food. The wilderness yields them bread for their children.
Job 24:6 ←
They cut their food in the field. They glean the vineyard of the wicked.
Job 24:7 ←
They lie all night naked without clothing, and have no covering in the cold.
Job 24:8 ←
They are wet with the showers of the mountains, and embrace the rock for lack of a shelter.
Job 24:9 ←
There are those who pluck the fatherless from the breast, and take a pledge of the poor,
Job 24:10 ←
so that they go around naked without clothing. Being hungry, they carry the sheaves.
Job 24:11 ←
They make oil within the walls of these men. They tread wine presses, and suffer thirst.
Job 24:12 ←
From out of the populous city, men groan. The soul of the wounded cries out, yet God doesn’t regard the folly.
Job 24:13 ←
“These are of those who rebel against the light. They don’t know its ways, nor stay in its paths.
Job 24:14 ←
The murderer rises with the light. He kills the poor and needy. In the night he is like a thief.
Job 24:15 ←
The eye also of the adulterer waits for the twilight, saying, ‘No eye will see me.’ He disguises his face.
Job 24:16 ←
In the dark they dig through houses. They shut themselves up in the daytime. They don’t know the light.
Job 24:17 ←
For the morning is to all of them like thick darkness, for they know the terrors of the thick darkness.
Job 24:18 ←
“They are foam on the surface of the waters. Their portion is cursed in the earth. They don’t turn into the way of the vineyards.
Job 24:19 ←
Drought and heat consume the snow waters, so does Sheol those who have sinned.
Job 24:20 ←
The womb will forget him. The worm will feed sweetly on him. He will be no more remembered. Unrighteousness will be broken as a tree.
Job 24:21 ←
He devours the barren who don’t bear. He shows no kindness to the widow.
Job 24:22 ←
Yet God preserves the mighty by his power. He rises up who has no assurance of life.
Job 24:23 ←
God gives them security, and they rest in it. His eyes are on their ways.
Job 24:24 ←
They are exalted; yet a little while, and they are gone. Yes, they are brought low, they are taken out of the way as all others, and are cut off as the tops of the ears of grain.
Job 24:25 ←
If it isn’t so now, who will prove me a liar, and make my speech worth nothing?”
Public Domain