Job 24

Job: Judgment for the Wicked

¹“Why does the Almighty not reserve times for judgment?

Why may those who know Him never see His days?

²Men move boundary stones;

they pasture stolen flocks.

³They drive away the donkey of the fatherless

and take the widow’s ox in pledge.

⁴They push the needy off the road

and force all the poor of the land into hiding.

⁵Indeed, like wild donkeys in the desert,

the poor go to work foraging for food;

the wasteland is food for their children.

⁶They gather fodder in the fields

and glean the vineyards of the wicked.

⁷Without clothing, they spend the night naked;

they have no covering against the cold.

⁸Drenched by mountain rains,

they huddle against the rocks for want of shelter.

⁹The fatherless infant is snatched from the breast;

the nursing child of the poor is seized for a debt.

¹⁰Without clothing, they wander about naked.

They carry the sheaves, but still go hungry.

¹¹They crush olives within their walls;

they tread the winepresses, but go thirsty.

¹²From the city, men groan,

and the souls of the wounded cry out,

yet God charges no one with wrongdoing.

¹³Then there are those who rebel against the light,

not knowing its ways or staying on its paths.

¹⁴When daylight is gone, the murderer rises

to kill the poor and needy;

in the night he is like a thief.1

¹⁵The eye of the adulterer watches for twilight.

Thinking, ‘No eye will see me,’ he covers his face.

¹⁶In the dark they dig through houses;

by day they shut themselves in,

never to experience the light.

¹⁷For to them, deep darkness is their morning;

surely they are friends with the terrors of darkness!

¹⁸They are but foam on the surface of the water;

their portion of the land is cursed,

so that no one turns toward their vineyards.

¹⁹As drought and heat consume the melting snow,

so Sheol steals those who have sinned.

²⁰The womb forgets them;

the worm feeds on them;

they are remembered no more.

So injustice is broken like a tree.

²¹They prey on the barren and childless,

and show no kindness to the widow.

²²Yet by His power, God drags away the mighty;

though rising up, they have no assurance of life.

²³He gives them a sense of security,

but His eyes are on their ways.

²⁴They are exalted for a moment,

then they are gone;

they are brought low and gathered up like all others;

they are cut off like heads of grain.

²⁵If this is not so, then who can prove me a liar

and reduce my words to nothing?”