Job 24:9
The fatherless infant is snatched from the breast; the nursing child of the poor is seized for a debt.
BSB
ASV
There are that pluck the fatherless from the breast, And take a pledge of the poor;
KJV
They pluck the fatherless from the breast, and take a pledge of the poor.
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.
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.
Rare words are the text's own signal of a deliberate thread: the fewer the occurrences, the more the places it appears belong together.
The walk8
Follow this verse’s cross-references two steps out. Each card is a verse this one points to, and beneath it the verses that one points to in turn. Where several different paths arrive at the same place, that place is listed first: the text keeps returning to it. Every stop shows its own words, and every stop is a page.
Through
2 Kings 4:1Now the wife of one of the sons of the prophets cried out to Elisha, “Your servant, my husband, is dead, and you know that your servant feared the LORD. And now his creditor…
leads to
Since the man was unable to pay, the master ordered that he be sold to pay his debt, along with his wife and children and everything he owned.
Then the sons of the prophets at Bethel came out to Elisha and said, “Do you know that the LORD will take your master away from you today?” “Yes, I know,” he replied. “Do…
The LORD is pleased with those who fear Him, who hope in His loving devotion.
Some were saying, “We and our sons and daughters are numerous. We must get grain in order to eat and stay alive.”
If a countryman among you becomes destitute and sells himself to you, then you must not force him into slave labor.
Through
Nehemiah 5:5We and our children are just like our countrymen and their children, yet we are subjecting our sons and daughters to slavery. Some of our daughters are already enslaved, but we are powerless to…
leads to
If a countryman among you becomes destitute and sells himself to you, then you must not force him into slave labor.
Now the wife of one of the sons of the prophets cried out to Elisha, “Your servant, my husband, is dead, and you know that your servant feared the LORD. And now his creditor…
Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay a hand on him; for he is our brother, our own flesh.” And they agreed.