Jobchapter 24
25 verses · KJVJob book hub →
Key verse
Why, seeing times are not hidden from the Almighty, do they that know him not see his days?
It stands in scene A of the chapter, verses 1 to 12.
The chapter
Chapter summary
Job continues into a protest about God's timing: 'Why are times not laid up by the Almighty? and why do not they that know him see his days?' (24:1). Then a documentary of unpunished cruelty: men remove landmarks, drive away the flock of the fatherless, take the widow's ox for a pledge, turn the needy out of the way. The poor go naked in the cold and hungry among the sheaves. The murderer rises with the light; the adulterer waits for the twilight, saying, No eye shall see me; 'they are of them that rebel against the light.' Yet God prolongs the mighty by his power. If it be not so, who will prove me a liar?
Context
Poetry · Unknown · Job overview
Where the chapter sits
Job 24 falls in Dialogue: three cycles (chapters 3–27). Job's opening complaint (3); three rounds with Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar; the friends' rigid retribution theology; the third cycle breaks: Zophar does not speak again. The dialogue exhausts itself as argument.
Before it: Prose prologue: heavenly court, chapters 1–2. After it: Hymn to wisdom, chapters 28.
The whole shape of Job→The world behind this chapter
Job 24The history
Job answers Eliphaz's invented charges with real ones, drawn from the world around them. He starts with boundary stones: 'some remove the landmarks'. Fields were marked by inscribed stones, and moving one stole land silently. Mesopotamian boundary markers were carved with elaborate curses against anyone who shifted them, and every legal tradition of the region treated it as a serious crime.
The rest of the history, and what it meant to them
Then the debt system in operation. They drive away the donkey of the fatherless and take the widow's ox for a pledge, seizing the one animal a poor household needed to plough or carry. They pluck the fatherless from the breast and take a pledge of the poor. The needy are turned out of the way and the poor of the earth hide themselves together.
The picture of the working poor is the sharpest social writing in the Old Testament. They go out to their labour like wild donkeys in the desert, rising early for prey; they reap in a field that is not theirs and gather the vintage of the wicked. They are wet with the showers of the mountains and embrace the rock for want of a shelter. They carry the sheaves and remain hungry; they make oil inside the walls of the rich and tread the winepresses, and suffer thirst.
The last section moves to night crimes, when there were no lamps in the street and no watch outside the gate: the murderer rising with the light to kill the poor, the adulterer waiting for the twilight and disguising his face, thieves digging through the mud-brick walls of houses they had marked in daylight. Morning to them, Job says, is as the shadow of death, their working day runs the other way round.
What it meant to them
The question that opens the chapter, why, seeing times are not hidden from the Almighty, do they that know him not see his days?, is a demand for the court calendar. Job wants to know when the case will be heard.
For hearers who lived at the bottom of that system, this chapter was the Bible taking their side out loud, and refusing to explain their suffering away.
Sources cited
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews & Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
- Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions
A. Job: Why Are Times of Judgment Not Laid Up by the Almighty?
1. (v. 1)
a.Why, seeing times are not hidden from the Almighty: Job opens the catalogue that follows with the problem stated plainly rather than argued: if God has appointed times of reckoning and those times are not hidden from him, why do the people who know him not never see his days of judgment arrive? Henry reads the question as Job granting the friends their premise, that God does set times for the wicked, while denying their conclusion, that those times are visibly kept. Delitzsch notes that the whole chapter is built to answer this one verse with evidence rather than theory, a list of crimes that go on in plain sight without visible consequence.
Job 24:1, 2 voicesWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
Job 24:1
“Why, seeing times are not hidden froth the Almighty - Dr. Good renders this, “Wherefore are not doomdays kept by the Almighty. So that his offenders may eye his periods?” Dr. Noyes: “Why are not times of punishment reserved by the Almighty. And why do not they, who regard him, see his judgments?” Jerome, “Times are not hidden from the Almighty; but they who know him are ignorant of his days.” The Septuagint, “But why have set times - ὧραι hōrai, escaped the notice - ἔλαθον elathon - of the Almighty, and the wicked transgressed all bounds?”
Job 24:1
“Though this is a mystery of Providence, yet there is a reason for it, and we shall shortly know why the judgment is deferred; even the wisest, and those who know God best, do not yet see it. God will exercise their faith and patience, and excite their prayers for the coming of his kingdom, for which they are to cry day and night to him, Luke xviii.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2. (vv. 2-4)
a.Some remove the landmarks: The catalogue opens with crimes any hearer would recognize as wrong: moving a neighbor's boundary stone, seizing flocks by force, driving off the fatherless child's donkey and taking the widow's ox as security for a debt she cannot pay. Gill reads these as offenses against the weakest members of a patriarchal household economy, the very people the law and custom were meant to shield. The needy are turned out of the way and the poor of the earth hide themselves together, victims rather than actors, set up against the criminals named around them.
Job 24:2, 2 voices
Job 24:2
“Some remove the landmarks - Stones or posts were originally set up to ascertain the bounds of particular estates: and this was necessary in open countries, before hedges and fences were formed. Wicked and covetous men often removed the landmarks or termini, and set them in on their neighbors’ ground, that, by contracting their boundaries, they might enlarge their own. The law of Moses denounces curses on those who remove their neighbors’ landmarks. See Deu 19:14; Deu 27:17, and the note on the former place, where the subject is considered at large.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 24:2
“Forging or destroying deeds is now a crime equivalent to this. They dispossess them of their personal estates, under colour of justice. They violently take away flocks, pretending they are forfeited, and feed thereof; as the rich man took the poor man's ewe lamb, 2 Sam. xii.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Job 24:3, 1 voice
Job 24:3
“They drive away the ass of the fatherless - Of the orphan, who cannot protect himself, and whose only property may consist in this useful animal. Injury done to an orphan is always regarded as a crime of special magnitude, for they are unable to protect themselves; see the notes at Job 22:9. They take the widow’s ox for a pledge - See the notes at Job 22:6. The widow was dependent on her ox to till the ground, and hence, the crime of taking it away in pledge for the payment of a debt.”
3. (vv. 5-8)
a.Behold, as wild asses in the desert: The lens turns from the oppressors to their victims foraging like wild asses in the desert, rising early for a prey that is only the wilderness's own meager food for themselves and their children. They reap another man's field and gather the wicked's vintage for wages, wet with mountain showers and embracing a bare rock for want of any shelter. Watson reads the picture as deliberately pitiful rather than picturesque, the poor doing the labor that keeps the oppressors fed while owning none of the harvest themselves.
Job 24:5, 2 voices
Job 24:5
“Behold, as wild asses in the desert - In regard to the wild ass, see the notes at Job 6:5. Schultens, Good, Noyes, and Wemyss, understand this, not as referring to the haughty tyrants themselves, but to the oppressed and needy wretches whom they had driven from society, and compelled to seek a precarious subsistence, like the wild ass, in the desert. They suppose that the meaning is, that these outcasts go to their daily toil seeking roots and vegetables in the desert for a subsistence, like wild animals.”
Job 24:5
“So Ishmael is called a "wild ass-man"; These Bedouin robbers, with the unbridled wildness of the ass of the desert, go forth thither. Robbery is their lawless "work." The desert, which yields no food to other men, yields food for the robber and his children by the plunder of caravans. rising betimes--In the East travelling is begun very early, before the heat comes on.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Job 24:6, 2 voices
Job 24:6
They reap every one his corn in the field - This is perfectly characteristic. These wandering hordes often make sudden irruptions, and carry off the harvest of grain, olives, vines, etc., and plunge with it into the wilderness, where none can follow them. The Chaldee gives the same sense: “They reap in a field that is not their own, and cut off the vineyard of the wicked.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 24:6
“If we translate "belonging to the wicked," then it will imply that the wicked alone have vineyards, the "pious poor" (Job 24:4) have none. "Gather" in Hebrew, is "gather late." As the first clause refers to the early harvest of corn, so the second to the vintage late in autumn.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Job 24:7, 2 voices
Job 24:7
“They cause the naked to lodge without clothing - They strip others of their clothing, and leave them destitute. That they have no covering in the cold - All travelers tell us, that though the day is intensely hot in the deserts of Arabia, yet the nights are often intensely cold. Hence, the sufferings of those who are plundered, and who have nothing to defend themselves from the cold air of the night.”
Job 24:7
“UMBREIT understands it of the Bedouin robbers, who are quite regardless of the comforts of life, "They pass the night naked, and uncovered," &c. But the allusion to Job 22:6, makes the English Version preferable (see on Job 24:10). Frost is not uncommon at night in those regions (Ge 31:40).”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
4. (vv. 9-12)
a.They pluck the fatherless from the breast: The oppression named in the opening verses is pressed further here, an infant plucked from the breast and a pledge taken of the poor man who has nothing else to give, until the naked go without clothing and carry another man's sheaf while hungry themselves. Men groan from out of the city, and the soul of the wounded crieth out, a plain cry of suffering, yet God layeth not folly to them restates the chapter's opening problem in its starkest form: the wrong is heard, and still unanswered. Barnes notes that this line is the hinge of the whole catalogue, the evidence gathered specifically to press the question of verse one.
Job 24:9, 2 voices
Job 24:9
“They pluck the fatherless from the breast,.... Either on purpose to starve it, which must be extremely barbarous; or to sell it to be brought up a slave; or by obliging the mother to wean it before the due time, that she might be the better able to do work for them they obliged her to.”
Job 24:9
“They pluck the fatherless from the breast - That is, they steal away unprotected children, and sell them, or make slaves of them for their own use. If this is the correct interpretation, then there existed at that time, what has existed since, so much to the disgrace of mankind, the custom of kidnapping children, and bearing them away to be sold as slaves. Slavery existed in early ages; and it must have been in some such way that slaves were procured.”
Job 24:10, 2 voices
Job 24:10
“They cause him to go naked - These cruel, hard-hearted oppressors seize the cloth made for the family wear, or the wool and flax out of which such clothes should be made. And they take away the sheaf - Seize the grain as soon as it is reaped, that they may pay themselves the exorbitant rent at which they have leased out their land: and thus the sheaf - the thraves and ricks, by which they should have been supported, are taken away from the hungry.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 24:10
“In Job 24:7 a like sin is alluded to: but there he implies open robbery of garments in the desert; here, the more refined robbery in civilized life, under the name of a "pledge." Having stripped the poor, they make them besides labor in their harvest-fields and do not allow them to satisfy their hunger with any of the very corn which they carry to the heap.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Job 24:11, 2 voices
Job 24:11
“Which made oil within their walls - Or rather, they compel them to express oil within their walls. The word יצהירו yatshı̂yrû, rendered “made oil,” is from צחר tsachar, to shine, to give light; and hence, the derivatives of the word are used to denote light, and then oil, and thence the word comes to denote to press out oil for the purpose of light. Oil was obtained for this purpose from olives by pressing them, and the idea here is, that the poor were compelled to engage in this service for others without compensation.”
Job 24:11
“Which--"They," the poor, "press the oil within their wall"; namely, not only in the open fields (Job 24:10), but also in the wall-enclosed vineyards and olive gardens of the oppressor (Isa 5:5). Yet they are not allowed to quench their "thirst" with the grapes and olives.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Job 24:12, 1 voice
Job 24:12
“Groan - Under grievous oppressions. Soul - The life or blood of those who are wounded to death, as this word properly signifies, crieth aloud to God for vengeance.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
B. Job: They Rebel Against the Light
1. (vv. 13-17)
a.They are of those that rebel against the light: A second group joins the catalogue, criminals who rebel against the light itself and know not its ways: the murderer rising with the dawn to kill the poor and needy, then turning thief by night, the adulterer who waits for twilight so that no eye shall see him and disguises his face, and the housebreaker who marks a door by day and digs through it in the dark. Clarke notes the deliberate reversal these men live by, morning is to them even as the shadow of death, because daylight threatens exposure the way night threatens other men with danger. The catalogue's crimes are ordinary and everywhere, done by people who have simply arranged their lives around the dark.
Job 24:13, 2 voices
Job 24:13
“They are rebellious against the light. They know not the ways thereof, nor have returned by the paths thereof. LITERAL INTERPRETATION Very often wicked people at once know the right things that they ought to follow, and yet neglect to follow what they know; and so they are 'rebellious against the light,' in that following their desires, they contemn the good that they know. They then that do wrong not from ignorance, but pride, present the shield of their exaltation against the darts of truth, that they may not be stricken in heart to their good.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XVIpatristic
Job 24:13
“They are of those that rebel against the light - That is, they hate the light: compare Joh 3:20. It is unpleasant to them, and they perform their deeds in the night. Job here commences a reference to another class of wicked persons - those who perform their deeds in the darkness of the night; and he shows that the same thing is true of them as of those who commit crimes in open day, that God does not interpose directly to punish them. They are suffered to live in prosperity.”
Job 24:14, 1 voice
Job 24:14
“The murderer rising with the light - Perhaps the words should be read as Mr. Good has done: - With the daylight ariseth the murderer; Poor and needy, he sheddeth blood. This description is suitable to a highwayman; one who robs in daylight, and who has been impelled by poverty and distress to use this most unlawful and perilous mode to get bread; and for fear of being discovered or taken, commits murder, and thus adds crime to crime.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 24:15, 2 voices
Job 24:15
“The eye also of the adulterer waiteth for the twilight, saying, No eye shall see me. And disguiseth his face. There is nothing to hinder but that this may be understood even after the latter, seeing that he who desires to commit adultery, seeks out the dark. But whereas it is a sentence uttered against Heretics, it is meet that this thing which is declared be understood in a mystical sense. Thus Paul says, For we are not as many that adulterate the word of God. For the adulterer seeks not offspring, but pleasure in the act of carnal copulation.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XVIpatristic
Job 24:15
“The eye also of the adulterer waiteth for the twilight; - compare the description in Pro 7:8-9, “He went the way to her house; in the twilight, in the evening, in the black and dark night.” And disguiseth his face - Margin, “setteth his face in secret.” The meaning is, that he put a mask on his face, lest he should be recognized. So Juvenal, Sat. viii. 144, as quoted by Noyes: - si nocturnus adulter Tempora Santonico velas adoperta cucullo.”
Job 24:16, 1 voice
Job 24:16
“In the dark they dig through houses - Thieves in Bengal very frequently dig through the mud wall and under the clay floors of houses, and, entering unperceived, plunder them while the inhabitants are asleep. Mr. Good’s version of this paragraph I shall lay before the reader: - Job 24:15 For the dark too watcheth the eye of the adulterer; Exclaiming, No eye shall behold me. Then putteth he the muffler on his face; Job 24:16 He wormeth into houses amidst the darkness.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 24:17, 2 voices
Job 24:17
“For the morning is to them even as the shadow of death - They dread the light as one does usually the deepest darkness. The morning or light would reveal their deeds of wickedness, and they therefore avoid it. As the shadow of death - As the deepest darkness; see the notes at Job 3:5. If one know them - If they are recognized. Or, more probably, this means “they,” that is, each one of them, “are familiar with the terrors of the shadow of death,” or with the deepest darkness.”
Job 24:17
“Rather, "They know well (are familiar with) the terrors of," &c. [UMBREIT]. Or, as MAURER, "They know the terrors of (this) darkness," namely, of morning, the light, which is as terrible to them as darkness ("the shadow of death") is to other men.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
2. (vv. 18-21)
a.He is swift as the waters: The tone shifts here from crimes unpunished to a portion described as already cursed, swift as waters passing away, their vineyard's way avoided, drought and heat consuming the snow waters just as the grave consumes those who have sinned, evil dealt to the barren woman and no good done for the widow. Davidson reads verses eighteen through twenty-one as the familiar doctrine of the friends, swift retribution overtaking the wicked, which Job has set inside his own speech rather than argued in his own voice. Delitzsch reads the same lines as Job's own concession that judgment is real, only delayed rather than absent, the tension the closing verses will press to a challenge.
Job 24:18, 1 voice
Job 24:18
“He is swift as the waters - Literally, Light is he on the face of the waters: and cursed shall be their portion on the earth, which Mr. Good translates: - Miserable is this man on the waters: Deeply miserable the lot of those on dry land. He beholdeth not the way of the vineyards - These no longer flourish or bring forth fruit. The labor of the vintage fails.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 24:19, 2 voices
Job 24:19
“Drought and heat consume the snow-waters - Margin, “violently take;” see the notes at Job 6:17. The word rendered “consume,” and in the margin “violently take” (יגזלו yı̂gâzelû), means properly to strip off, as skin from the flesh; and then to pluck or tear away by force; to strip, to spoil, to rob. The meaning here is, that the heat seems to seize and carry away the snow waters - to bear them off, as a plunderer does spoil. There is much poetic beauty in this image.”
Job 24:19
Arabian image; melted snow, as contrasted with the living fountain, quickly dries up in the sunburnt sand, not leaving a trace behind (Job 6:16-18). The Hebrew is terse and elliptical to express the swift and utter destruction of the godless; (so) "the grave--they have sinned!"
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Job 24:20, 2 voices
Job 24:20
“The womb shall forget him - The mother that bare him shall have no affection for him, nor be afflicted at his death. But the word רחם rechem signifies compassion, mercy. Mercy shall be unmindful of him. How dreadful such a state! When mercy itself forgets the sinner, his perdition slumbereth not. The worm shall feed sweetly on him - The Chaldee has, “The cruel, who have neglected to commiserate the poor, shall be sweet to the worms.” He shall be brought into a state of the greatest degradation, and shall be no more remembered.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 24:20
"God sets no such mark of his displeasure upon him but that his mother may soon forget him. The hand of justice does not hang him on a gibbet for the birds to feed on; but he is carried to his grave like other men, to be the sweet food of worms. There he lies quietly, and neither he nor his wickedness is any more remembered than a tree which is broken to shivers." And
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Job 24:21, 2 voices
Job 24:21
“He evil entreateth the barren - The woman who has no children to comfort or support her. He increases her calamity by acts of cruelty and oppression. To be without children, as is well known, was regarded, in the patriarchal ages, as a great calamity. And doeth not good to the widow - See the notes at Job 24:3. Notwithstanding all this, he is permitted to live in prosperity, and to die without any visible tokens of the divine displeasure.”
Job 24:21
“The reason given by the friends why the sinner deserves such a fate. barren--without sons, who might have protected her. widow--without a husband to support her.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
3. (vv. 22-25)
a.He draweth also the mighty with his power: The chapter closes with the mighty drawn along by God's power, given a season of safety while his eyes remain upon their ways, exalted for a little while and then gone, brought low and cut off as the tops of the ears of corn. Two readings stand on this close without a verdict between them: Delitzsch and much of the older bench read it as Job conceding that judgment does eventually reach the wicked, only later than the friends allow, while Davidson and others read the whole span from verse eighteen as Job quoting the friends' comfortable creed back at them before overturning it with the final challenge. If it be not so now, who will make me a liar, and make my speech nothing worth carries the chapter's real force either way, an open dare that the friends' doctrine answer the evidence Job has just laid out.
Job 24:22, 2 voices
Job 24:22
“He took away the mighty in his might. Since in the might of his wickedness the mighty he severally takes away, whilst by the craftiness of his error he carries off the great ones of this world. In opposition to whom it is said by Paul, God hast chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XVIIpatristic
Job 24:22
“He draweth also the mighty - Calmet gives the following version of the original: “He draws with him guards for his defense; he raises himself up, and does not feel assured of his life.” In the midst even of his guards he is afraid; and dares not put confidence in any person. This is an admirable delineation of the inquietudes and terrors of a tyrant.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 24:23, 2 voices
Job 24:23
“God hath given unto him room for repentance, and he abuseth it in pride. Whosoever commits sin and lives, such a person Divine Appointment for this reason bears with in iniquity, that it may withhold him from iniquity. But he that is borne with for a longer time, and yet is not withholden from iniquity, is vouchsafed indeed the benefit of the patience Above, yet with the chains of his guilt is by that very benefit binding himself the tighter.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XVIIpatristic
Job 24:23
“Though it be given him to be in safety - That is, God gives him safety. The name God is often understood, or not expressed. The meaning is, that God gives this wicked man, or oppressor, safety. He is permitted to live a life of security and tranquility. Whereon he resteth - Or, rather, “And he is sustained, or upheld” - (וישׁען veyshâ‛an). The meaning is, that he is sustained or upheld by God.”
Job 24:24, 2 voices
Job 24:24
“They are exalted for a little while, but they shall not hold on. The glory of bad men, whilst it is for the most part extended into a multitude of years, is by the minds of the weak reckoned to be long and as it were stable; but when an instantaneous end cuts it off, surely it proves to its face that it was short, because the end by putting a limit makes it known that that which was capable of passing away was little.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XVIIpatristic
Job 24:24
“Join "for a while" with "are gone," not as English Version. Translate: "A moment--and they are no more! They are brought low, as all (others) gather up their feet to die" (so the Hebrew of "are taken out of the way").”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Job 24:25, 1 voice
Job 24:25
“And if it be not so now, who will make me a liar? - A challenge to anyone to prove the contrary to what he had said. Job had now attacked their main position, and had appealed to facts in defense of what he held. He maintained that, as a matter of fact, the wicked were prospered, that they often lived to old age, and that they then died a peaceful death, without any direct demonstration of the divine displeasure. He boldly appeals, now, to anyone to deny this, or to prove the contrary. The appeal was decisive.”
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Job 24. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on 10 works. Open for the list.
This page draws on A. B. Davidson, The Book of Job, Cambridge Bible; Adam Clarke; Albert Barnes; Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Book of Job; Gregory the Dialogist; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871); John Gill; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765); Matthew Henry and R. A. Watson, The Book of Job, Expositor's Bible.
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