LEB - Job - 24

24:1  “Why are not times kept by Shaddai, and why do not those who know him see his days?

24:2  They remove border stones; they seize flocks, and they pasture them.

24:3  They drive away the donkey of orphans; they take the widow’s ox as a pledge.

24:4  They thrust the poor off the road; the needy of the earth hide themselves together.

24:5  “Look, like wild donkeys in the desert they go out to their labor as searchers for the prey; the wilderness is ⌞their⌟ food for the young.

24:6  They reap their fodder in the field, and they glean in the vineyard of the wicked.

24:7  They spend the night naked, ⌞without⌟ clothing, and they have no garment in the cold.

24:8  They are wet from the rainstorm of the mountains, and they cling to the rock ⌞without⌟ refuge.

24:9  “They snatch the orphan from the breast, and they take a pledge against the needy.

24:10  They go about naked, without clothing, and hungry, they carry the sheaves.

24:11  Between their terraces they press out oil; they tread the presses, but they are thirsty.

24:12  From the city people groan, and the throat of the wounded cries for help; yet God does not ⌞regard it as unseemly⌟.

24:13  “Those are among the ones rebelling against the light; they do not recognize his ways, and they do not stay in his paths.

24:14  ⌞At dusk⌟ the murderer rises; he kills the needy and the poor, and in the night he is like a thief.

24:15  And the eye of the adulterer waits for dusk, saying, ⌞‘No eye will see me,’⌟ and he places a covering on his face.

24:16  He digs through houses in the darkness; by day they shut themselves in— they do not know the light

24:17  because morning likewise is to them deep darkness; indeed, they know about the terrors of deep darkness.

24:18  “He himself is swift on the water’s surface; their portion is cursed in the land. ⌞No one turns toward the path of their vineyards⌟.

24:19  Drought and heat snatch away the snow waters, like Sheol snatches away those who have sinned.

24:20  The womb forgets him. The maggot feasts on him until he is no longer remembered, and wickedness is broken like a tree.

24:21  He feeds on the barren, who does not have a child, and does no good to the widow.

24:22  Yet he carries off the tyrants by his strength; if he rises up, then he cannot be certain of life.

24:23  He gives security to him, and he is supported, but his eyes are upon their ways.

24:24  They are exalted a little while, then ⌞they are gone⌟. And they are brought low; they are cut off like all others, and like the heads of grain they wither away.

24:25  “And if it is not so, then who can prove me a liar and reduce my word to nothing?”